User Experience: Resist that Redesign

Article focuses on making continuous, small changes to the library website rather than a big overhaul. Provides reasons why not to do a big change, and suggestions for implementing/easing the transition to such a committee/project.

"Don’t redesign your website. You will be tempted, especially if your website hasn’t received adequate attention in the past few years—but don’t do it. Learn from some of the most successful websites around. Amazon, Apple, Google, and Netflix have never done major redesigns. They’ve slowly evolved their sites instead. Like them, plan to make many small improvements constantly to your website through incremental iterative changes."

"Website redesign projects, even if they result in a technically improved website, are likely to affect adversely the heaviest users of your site. Consider the inevitable outcry that follows any change to the Facebook interface. Momentum plays a big part in usability, and people adapt to designs even if they’re less than ideal. Forcing them into an entirely new environment is jarring no matter how friendly the result. Fortunately, small iterative change spreads out the cognitive load required to learn new things on a site."

"If your site is truly that awful, there are probably plenty of obvious fixes you can make right away. Spend a year constantly tuning up your site and turning it into the site you want, learning as you go, rather than putting all of your money on the elusive perfect redesign. It’s going to take time, money, and the right talent, but it will pay off—and right away."

LJ March 1, 2011