Embarking Upon My Site Redesign

I've procrastinated long enough! What example am I setting for my clients and colleagues, when my own site lies neglected? So this summer, I will embark upon my own site redesign.

I will start by interviewing myself, researching the competitive landscape (I'm looking at you, fellow Site Optimizers) and identifying my goals for the new site. I hope to use this space here to share my experience with you.

Being the visual thinker that I am, I couldn't resist diving into some sketches to generate ideas. These serve as an initial brain dump, nothing more. See below.







Stay tuned...

8 Reasons Why Your New Site Isn't Performing

Tell me if this has happened to you. Client says: "I don't get it. We just spent tons of money redesigning our site. It looks so much better. How could online sales be down?"

And you say: "It's the economy, stupid."

Now hold your horses there, Junior. Let's not jump to conclusions. The economy can be blamed for plenty (see: Housing Collapse and Demise of Auto Industry). eMarketer forecasts that retail e-commerce sales (excluding travel) will likely be flat in 2009.

There could be many reasons why your shiny and new transaction-based site isn't performing so well. Sure, some will be healed over time. But the good news is that most can be overcome with better planning.

Here are 8 traffic and site-side client challenges that I've recently observed:

• 1. New site architecture can take weeks or months for your visitors to adjust
• 2. New SEO tactics could take weeks or months for organic traffic to pick up again
• 3. Login module was moved to new position on page and visitors can't find it
• 4. Primary call-to-action was moved to a new position
• 5. RSS feed was changed and now it's broken for past subscribers
• 6. New site is so different, that visitors immediately abandon because they think they're in the wrong place
• 7. Familiar past site functionality was removed (for better or for worse)
• 8. New site has either too hard or too soft of a selling approach in comparison to prior design

Flickr Image: kevindooley