Should you redesign your website? The answer is ‘maybe…’

6.2.2014

We live in an era of change. All around us, technology, the built environment, socio-political landscapes and our modes of communication seem in constant flux. Not surprising then, that the impetus to create change is a strong force within us. The key is to know when to make changes and to what degree.

Myriad reasons can be put forth for the redesign of a website and there are endless articles online brimming with numbered lists that attest to the pros. Many of these points are valid, more still are exceedingly obvious. When considering the question at hand one can set about the usual Google searches and find many of the usual articles, with the usual reasons for redesigning your website—it can be as uninspiring a process as it sounds.

There are, however, articles that take a different tack and make for a refreshing oasis of clarity amidst the clamour. One such piece was written in 2005 for online web practices site “A List Apart” by Cameron Moll, now Head-of-Design at Facebook. The title “Good Designers Redesign, Great Designers Realign“ could be accused of being graphic design clickbait, aren’t we all eagerly beavering away in the never-ending pursuit of being a great designer? *big eyes emoji

Moll advocates for realignment as opposed to redesign. This is more than just a bad case of the semantics. Realignment refers to a careful consideration of content and purpose. It is not solely concerned with ‘the look of the thing’—a common hump of which people in both design and non-design circles can fall foul when talking about design. Moll simplifies his argument by identifying two camps: the realigners and the redesigners. He states: “.. the differences between Redesigners and Realigners might be summarized as follows: The desire to redesign is aesthetic-driven, while the desire to realign is purpose-driven.”

When looking at website design through this lens, it’s possible this analysis can lead to big design changes but more often it leads to incremental changes. The point is to be able to justify these changes. Cameron is not really trying to sub-divide designers here, or denigrate the impulse for creating aesthetically-pleasing design, but rather he is trying to advocate for a considered approach to the practice.

Here at Boyle Design Group, over the past year we have been engaged in re-evaluating our own brand and whether or not it reflects who we are as a creative studio and commercial enterprise. In the spirit of realignment we conducted extensive surveys and research to determine if how we saw ourselves truly aligned with how we were presenting ourselves to the outside world. We found that while our dedication to our clients and our commitment to producing great design outputs was still the same as ever, significant changes had occurred internally over time and we wanted to address that. The Boyle Design Group team has undergone some transformation in the past couple of years, with a well-loved colleague moving on to pastures new, making way for new team members, bringing with them different skillsets, a fresh pair of eyes and an eagerness to take on new challenges. In the past few years we have also acquired a number of new clients, each project presenting us with its own set of requirements and leading us to unique and exciting territories, and nurturing within us an appetite for an ever-more diverse working project base.

It was decided that we were ready to reconsider our brand. We applied the same realignment-thinking to the process of designing our new identity. Our previous identity had quite a light touch and we felt something a bit more robust, dynamic and flexible would better reflect who we are as a company now.

Our website is the first big roll-out of our new design. At the time of writing, we are nearing the end of this process and can begin to reflect on our decision. Looking specifically at the website for the purposes of this blogpost, can we claim that the changes we have made are justified? Luckily Moll has outlined a handy questioning process by which we can judge.

Ensure there is a raison d’étre.

Check.

Our raison (or raisons) d’etre could be presented as three keywords: showcase, reflect, attract.

We would like to better showcase new and updated projects;
We need to reflect our activity level and our company personality;
And we aspire to attract new clients outside of our existing client base.

Determine what level of realignment is required.

Showcase In order to best showcase our new and updated projects we wanted a site that would give precedence to the visual while allowing our tone-of-voice to come through. This required a major shift as our previous site hosted much smaller images and didn’t account for the large monitors that are more commonly found in offices these days.

Reflect With a new team and a whole host of new projects under our belt it felt like our old site didn’t reflect our current incarnation. We have also become a lot more active on social media channels and within business communities and wanted exisiting and potential clients to get a sense of that when they visited our website, whether it be their first- or a repeat-visit.

Attract We are always on the lookout for exciting new projects. While we have been prolific in many industries, there are others that we would like to make inroads to. This goal demanded much consideration concerning the information hierarchy of our new site. We have made attempts to foreground those projects that demonstrate the breadth of our experience and aim to make our openness and enthusiasm for new challenges a clear focus through our tone-of-voice and messaging. We have the opportunity now to realign our online presence with this aim in mind.

Evaluate user switching costs.

The Boyle Design Group site is designed to show clients—potential and existing—the breadth and quality of our work, our level of activity and our engagement within our own and various other industries. Our existing site makes some attempt to do that but it is more reserved and to get a good sense of the company requires a number of clicks. This new site is far more impactful and immediate. Therefore we believe that the switch will be mostly painless, in fact it will be a relief for site users to find the information they are seeking more easily. For existing clients, the shift in tone-of-voice may initially require some readjustment but upon scrolling they will soon see projects with which they may be familiar. The heavy-lean on imagery means that recognition should come almost immediately. Again the site had been redesigned to align with some element of change in Boyle Design Group so it is important that the shift is perceptible and makes an impact on our site users.

Determine the impact on launch plans.

Once we determined the level of realignment required and evaluated the user switching costs, this allowed us to develop a project schedule for the launch of our new site and identity. It is an oft-lamented tale that designers rarely get to work on their own promotional projects amidst the hub-bub of a commercial working practice, so we treated Brendan and Jane as external clients for whom we fulfilled the same design process and met serious deadlines as we would for any of our valued clients.

The new site will launch later this month in a single deployment, however there are phases to the identity that will change periodically that we have factored into our launch plans. We will, of course, be rolling out our identity beyond the website in our print and online communications. If you’d like to have a read of some of our insights regarding our new identity click here.