Redesign Vs Realign

I always thought with my own website that I would practice what I preached, using the knowledge that I gain from my inspirational piers and fellow designers. But that is simply not the case as I found out at the weekend.

After a brief discussion how we both knew our mutual friend, the conversation was started as to what my carreer was, when I announced that I was a web designer the conversation heated up as the friend of a friend was currently looking for such a person or company.

Quickly I put on my work hat and got to the basics of why she needed such help with her own business web site. "We have companies call up telling us our site could be better", upon asking why do you think that is the response was somewhat surprising. Her customers actually like the site, and use it very well, and she didnt really see the need to redesign the whole site if that was the case, regardless of how she thought it looked.

‘Redesign versus realign’ I said confidently, recalling in my mind an excellent piece by Cameron Moll over at ALA. My thoughts on the article were if something works, dont fix it by overhauling it, realign the parts that dont work.

I preached my case for some time, but it was not until tonight that my thoughts changed. That was until I opened up Safari and typed in the discussed web site URL. Upon loading the one thought that went through my mind was OSCommerce, I scrolled to the bottom of the page, and sure enough, there was the link.

In order to realign something, the design has to be right in the first place. Whilst I dont think anyone can get the design 100% perfect first time, redesign has to come at some point. Just maybe not so often as my own site, which seems to be every couple of months.

Posted On: Monday, February 23rd, 2009 @ 7:07 pm by Ian Tearle

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