The True Cost of Bad Website Redesign

So you’re interested in redesigning your website, huh? That’s great! Whether you’re restructuring your content marketing to reflect new corporate initiatives, or you simply want to add a modern edge to your style, a redesign for your website can be the perfect introduction for your new brand.

But hold on a second—you can’t just slap together a website redesign process willy-nilly and expect to see the traffic and conversion potential that your previous site enjoyed. Good website design needs to take into account the big picture every step of the way. When thrown together haphazardly, your website redesign may end up costing you.

And it can cost you big.

It’s Inoperable

As unfortunate as it is, many low-end web developers fail to create the basic functionality of back-end web design. A sloppy website redesign process can play havoc with your once user-friendly navigation, ruin your carefully cultivated network of inbound links, and may lack the responsive consumer-facing elements that make your site viewable on tablets and mobile devices.

What this means for your customers is that until you get the bugs worked out, your site is effectively worthless.

What this means for you is that you’ll be missing out on traffic and potential customers while you try to right the ship. It’s not easy to generate revenue when your site is littered with dead links, unintuitive navigation, and un-optimized code—not to mention that a website under heavy maintenance doesn’t exactly create consumer faith in a brand.

Crashing Your Content

Did your budget web designer use a bizarre font or color scheme? Is your user-facing interface inconsistent across pages? Did they muck up your landing hubs and content marketing framework? When developers build sites without keeping the schema of your content layout in mind, all of that value that you worked so hard to build amounts to nothing.

The content of your site drives traffic—when done well, content marketing can be valuable for generating leads, building a readership, and moving your viewers along your sales funnel.

When done poorly, you may find that your bounce rate has skyrocketed, the content you created has few viewers, and your conversion rate is in the toilet. Consistent and visually-appealing interfaces are essential for driving revenue generation and creating confidence in your brand.

Missing the Point

Unfocused web development will fall short in many areas, but can be particularly hard on those ephemeral design aspects that make your brand unique. These involve knowing what type of navigation your market finds most useful, how to stylistically display your products, and customizing your design to embody the goals and corporate vision that represents your business.

Even poor web designers can learn not to plaster the front page of your site with Flash cartoons and auto-playing music a la Myspace, but teaching them to design around the personalized needs of your customers and brand is a different story.

Customization for your market is essential in the design process. Brands that fail in this area often lack the viewership, engagement rates, and click-through potential that they may rightfully deserve.

The Big Picture

Your website redesign process isn’t just about improving one area of your site—they all work together to achieve a common goal. Like links in a chain, when one part fails, everything fails. This makes it essential that you contract with talented web designers when redesign time rolls around.

Your customers (and your performance-based indicators of success) will thank you for it.