Website redesign is not the fashion of the day rather it is an attempt to give a website a new lease of life by making minor or major changes in its designing structure and style so that it can thrive and continue its journey in the cutthroat competitive industry. Most of us have a website or at least have a blog (if you do not, you need to have now) and so far, we are quite satisfied with its look and structure. Since website design industry is evolving continuously, you will find it a bare necessity to make some changes in your website on regular basis so that it does become obsolete. So, if you are feeling bored with the same old look of your website, it can be said that the time has come to flaunt a new look.

Start From The Scratch
So, you have finally decided to redesign your website but still could not figure it out where to start. We suggest you to shrug off all the moral dilemma or designing indecisions before you start redesigning your website. Start from the structure and the alignment. Ask yourself whether the existing structure is good for your website or not. You can make minor tweaks here and there while keeping the existing structure intact. As far as the alignment of your website is concerned, there is enough scope for making experiments but you have to make sure that the experiments are not going wayward.

Think About The Visitors
New features are welcome but you need to make sure that they are not going to mess up the relationship that you have with your visitors. You need to respect the views and opinions of your visitors and never go against them. Before you start redesigning a website, you can start a poll and ask them to give their valuable inputs so that you can make a better decision. By using this feature, you will be able to avoid confrontation with your visitors.

Twitter Old Design

New Design of Twitter

Think About SEO
If your website is drawing a good amount of traffic each day, you should not go for an overhaul change since you are not certain how your website is being treated by search engine or what they like about it. You need a spider view of your website so that you can make a better judgment and here Webmaster Tools can help you a lot. Create a free account there and you will have all the features that you will need in this purpose. Now, try to stick to the same structure as far as possible.

whitehouse old design

whitehouse new design

Believe In Brand Value
You have an urge to reconstruct the entire structure of your website but you need to understand the simple truth that you should not play with the brand value of your blog or website. For say, people nurture certain ideas about Mashable. They know it as having simple structure, clean layout and with focus on content. Now image Mashable as a website with loads of images and videos with no content. Sound horrible, is not it? The same goes true with your website design. You need to keep your brand image intact. Do not change the logo completely rather try to spruce it up.

After a month of grueling experiments and calculations, we have finally launched a fresh new interface for our website design blog. It looks much more interactive, appealing and attractive than its previous version. However, we are open to take constructive criticisms in our stride, as it will help us to improve the quality of our blog a bit further. Let’s revert to the designing process. Well, it was a tough nut to crack since WebGuru Blog has regular visitors over thousand per day and the number is spiraling up continuously. Therefore, it was quite obvious that we could not introduce any thing that could go against sentiments of our valued visitors. Which is why we have not made any major change in our blog as far as its structure is concerned. What we have done instead is illustrated below:

Colorful Journey: The very thing that will seize your attention is the profuse use of color. Web industry is itself a colorful industry and here you can get a glimpse of it. Our previous design was somewhat simple and the focus was mainly on content. To jazz up the appearance of our blog, we have used mainly three colors Pink, Ash and Sky and the outcome is really impressive.

Old Design

New Logo: – This was a long overdue and we were working on it for the past couple of months. In the previous design, logo was somewhat overshadowed by some unwanted elements therefore, it never got required attention. However, the new logo of WebGuru Infosystems is like a fresh breeze. Apart from getting required level of attention; it looks perfect and oozes out a sense of professionalism. It is colorful too.

Old Logo                                             New Logo

Addition of Social Media: – We have integrated links of some of the popular social media websites where we have strong presence. What our visitors have to do is to click onto the button of any these social media sites if they want to explore more WebGuru Insystems.

Geek Character: – This is something that can hardly go unnoticed. Yes, we are taking about the character that is prominently placed in the header section of our Blog. He looks cool, knowledgeable, dependable and of course has a sense of humor. Ask him any thing related to website design, and he will definitely try to solve your query as far as possible.

Fast Browsing: – Previous design of our blog was a bit heavy and therefore, people with slow internet connect had to face a number of troubles. We were aware of this problem and that is why we have made revisions in the design to make it a bit faster. We have shunned unnecessary graphical elements and this has positive impacts on our website’s loading speed.

Just browse through our previous posts and do tell us what you feel about this new design. We will be glad to get feedback from you.

Smashing Magazine has never fallen out of popularity not just because its posts are different and of high quality, but because it gives value to the feedback of its staggering number of visitors. To offer a better browsing experience to its whopping number of visitors, it often makes minor tweaks in its website design. This goes without saying that in majority of cases, these minor changes have had positive impacts but there are some exceptions to this rule that should not be blatantly ignored. Here in this article, we will try to find out the positive as well as negative aspects of its existing website design:

A New Depth: – This is what people are likely to explore at Smashing Magazine, this time around. It looks much more compact and user friendly. It has shunned complex navigation and its website is remarkably free from visual gimmick (or to be precise visual blunder). Content gets the required focus and it is never sidelined by images or advertisement. It is an ideal fusion of images and text that has made Smashing Magazine an undisputed leader in its territory.

Logo Gets the Required Attention: – The look and feel of Smashing Magazine’s famed logo remains the same but it is getting more attention thanks to the minimal use of other images and texts that often overshadowed it in someway or other. Its current form now has a much-needed white space that makes it look truly nice and elegant.

Smashing Network: – This is a unique of its kind network that is aimed at getting cross traffic without adversely affecting its visitor retention policy. Posts of other related websites are featured here but it stays inactive by default unless and until it is clicked by a visitor.

Images of Ads: – Ads that appear in the left hand section of Smashing Magazine looks much more elegant and soothing than ever. As ad is its main source of its revenue generation, there is a little scope to go against the will of the advertisers even if the ads do not look so good.

Newsletter Sign Up Option: – This is something that few of us have expected from Smashing Magazine. Though Newsletter Sign Up option takes less space, its purpose is largely unclear. It does not dictate anything about why a visitor has to sign up for newsletter.

Big Images: Big images are used brilliantly but they might come a cropper while being viewed in slow internet connection. It will take long time to get loaded and might not augur well for it.

Footer Looks Impressive: – Footer of Smashing Magazine looks really impressive and clean. It has a positive impact on the hierarchy of the website. Links are well organized and do not look alien as far as the structure of the website is concerned.

It seems the bug of website redesign has finally bitten Wikipedia – the world largest free encyclopedia. Shedding its old, trusted and traditional look, Wikipedia has entered the web industry with a killer look. Its newly launch interface has come with a number of improvements that are designed and developed painstakingly to enhance users experience and to make it load fast. It looks much cleaner and sophisticated than its previous version. Users will find it far more interesting and easier to edit information on Wikipedia than ever. So, just take a visual tour with us to explore some of its unexplored aspects:

A Crystal Clear Look: – The very first thing that will seize your attention is that its uncluttered look. The fundamental patterns of its website design have kept intact and that means it is less likely to draw scathing feedbacks from its visitors. Another major change that is more likely top draw the attention of the viewers is the distance between main content and navigation. Its logo simply looks much more attractive, elegant and sharp than its previous version. This is certainly a welcome move. Continue reading ‘Redesign of Wikipedia: Take A Close Look’ »

By the term “website redesign” we mean upgrading the overall look and feel of a website. You may have your personal or business website, but with the course of time, it needs to be modified to cope up with the changing requirements of the online visitors.

In most of the time, it is observed that the newly designed website gets more attention from the online visitors than the old one. Thus the updated sites can draw the maximum number of traffic and thus can contribute in the profit maximization.

It is seen that an older site does not rank good in the search engine result page. This is because the search engines have the tendency to consider old sites as dead or dormant. Continue reading ‘Redesigning a Website – Few tips on Website Redesign’ »

An Introduction to Website Redesign

No one is perfect and so is Web Designer. No mater how hard and earnestly he had tried to add professional touches in a website, all his effort gradually wanes with the passing of time. As the concept of Professionalism varies from person to person and as it does not have a clear definition, web designers have to face immense difficulty to find out a proper solution to this seemingly unsoluble problem. The only solution they have in hand is redesigning a website in a regular interval, which is commonly known as “Website Redesign ”.

Why it is important?
The term “Website Redesign” is gaining more and more importance in the domain of web design thanks to its enormous popularity among website owners as well as web designers. With the development in the field of technology, online presence has become a necessity for every business organization. As competition is spiraling up in virtual world, the need for updating content, design and logo of a website in regular basis is gaining currency. The benefits of Website Redesign are enumerated below:

• Enhancing the brand image of an organization.
• Capturing the attention of online viewers.
• Giving pleasant surprise to clients and regular visitors.
• Outpacing competitors of the same field.
• Rectifying flaws of existing website (if any).
• Ensuring a regular flow of traffic.

How the concept has modified in due course of time.
Website Redesign is certainly not a new concept. In point of fact, this concept has undergone a sea change in the past few years. Logo redesign , which is an inseparable part of website redesign, has added a new dimension in it. Some large business organizations have considered this concept seriously and have given their consent to it. Logo is considered as a brand representative of a company and therefore a company needs to work out the future impact of this decision before jumping to a conclusion.

Google’s contribution in this respect.
The technical behemoth Google has popularized the concept of Logo redesign or Website redesign by frequently changing its logo. In order to commemorate memorable historical events and public holidays, Google usually changes its logo for giving a pleasant surprise to its millions of online users.
Below are some of the Google’s famous logos that were used in its past few years for making people aware of the important issues, which are happening around or have happened in the past.

Why website redesigning is gaining popularity?
Companies, which have a bad record, often opt for website redesigning as it helps a company to polish its brand identity or clean its public image. Redesigning logo has caught the fancy of many corporate giants, as its helps a company to reinstate its influential position in the market. In lieu of a complete facelift, some companies give consent to minor changes in a website. Just adding new images or a flash banner may fail to bring noticeable change in an existing website and therefore a person needs to incorporate creative inputs in it for the sake of changing common people’s perception about his business organization.

Different Companies Different Solutions
Website redesign is certainly not an easy task because a designer has to dictate the flaws in an existing website and at the same time, he has to offer innovative solutions to overcome those flaws. Apart from bettering the visual appearance of an existing website, a designer needs to remain aware of the brand image of that company. Sometime minor changes can do a good job and sometimes a designer has to suggest a complete change in the pattern and concept. One needs to put his trust on an experienced designer who is thoroughly acquainted with the latest development in the field of website design .

Cost an Important Factor
This is undoubtedly an important factor, which needs to be fixed before starting of a website redesign project. Changing the pattern of an existing website, adding latest technology like flash, 3D Max, Maya or shuffling the alignment requires a considerable amount of investment. If you are thinking about redesigning your logo, you need to pour a good amount of money in marketing campaign for making people aware of it. As giving finishing strokes is the main objective of website redesign, some web designers charge their clients exorbitantly.

However, growing competition has given an opportunity to website owners to grab a good deal from a reputed website redesign firm. Before putting your trust on a particular firm, one needs to gather information about the profile and reputation of that organization in advance. Viewing portfolio is certainly a good decision as it helps a person to form a fair concept about quality of service offered by a company.

Summing Up
One should not consider website redesign as a short-term task instead; it should be taken as a long-term project. If this project runs smoothly, a business organization will certainly be profited in long term.