Scientific Web Design: Evolutionary vs. Revolutionary Redesigns

There comes a time when every company feels they need a change. A boost of the digital presence and a move towards a “fresh” design.

The process usually looks like this:

1. Company wants a redesign.
2. Company selects a web development and design company to handle the redesign.
3. Company moves forward with the redesign guided by the look they like the most and what they feel is best for their target audience.
4. The new design launches and the website performance either stays the same or actually dips…

Why does this happen?

This process is known as “revolutionary website design”. It is the process of blowing up your current website to make room for something fresh and different. Unfortunately, some very important people are actually missing in this process: the people using the website!

Given the substantial costs of a website redesign, it’s important that companies begin linking those costs to the actual performance of the new design. Today, I’d like to discuss a new way to redesign your website!

Introducing: Evolutionary Website Design

Rather than blowing up your website and going in a direction that is deemed to be “better” by designers and stakeholders in the company, evolutionary design is a way of ensuring that a redesign will increase website performance. At the end of the day, every business’ website serves a purpose. There is an output that they would like to enhance—which could be one or more of the following:

• Leads
• Purchases
• Downloads
• Engagement

Evolutionary website design is a means of making changes to the website based on quantitative and qualitative visitor feedback. There are many benefits to this, but here are the main ones:

1. Confidence that Your Budget is Well Spent

While you will still need to invest in web developers and conversion optimization consultants to facilitate an evolutionary redesign, you can be sure that your money is well spent because any permanent changes made to the website have been tested and proven with statistical significance.

2. Increased Website Performance

Since all proposed changes will be tested to see if they actually improve the website’s business goals, you can be sure that the end product (after many rounds of testing and iteration) is actually performing at a higher rate than the original website.

3. Settle Political Debates

Evolutionary web design allows you to shift the conversation in your organization from “we think” to “we know”. Testing changes to the website is a great way to settle political debates with objective data.

It’s a “Win-Win-Win” Situation!

After you’ve conducted many rounds of testing, you’ll likely arrive to the following situation:

The website looks drastically different than it did before: Offering that “fresh” look you wanted in the first place.

The website is performing at higher level: Offering more business output.

Your target audience gets exactly what they need: Providing easier paths to finding the information that they need and taking the appropriate actions.

Do you have changes you’d like to make to your website? Do you want to be sure they actually improve the performance of your website before you make these changes permanently? Contact us today and see how we can help!