The vast majority of websites are redesigned as content increases, requirements change, and products evolve. However, it is inevitable that website redesign will encounter all kinds of problems, pitfalls and difficulties. Most web design mistakes are similar and can be easily solved.

1. Keep everything

I understand that making trade-offs is always a difficult task. Existing content has been with your site for years, and it can be hard to part with parts of it.

But before you decide to redesign your site, ask yourself: Are these hundreds of pages really going to solve all your visitors’ problems?

When it comes to trade-offs, it’s not enough to simply look at whether something is worth keeping — you have to convince yourself that it’s worth keeping. Keeping all content is a classic “hoarder” mentality that can be disastrous for a site’s visitors. Website content should be reviewed. Communicate with actual and potential users of the site and use actual feedback and data to support the redesign. Say goodbye to stale, outdated content and build a new site with concise language and lean pages.

A lot of times, the role of a content strategist is more like a relationship counselor, where you need to determine what is redundant, outdated, trivial, why it’s confusing, and what is actually useful.

2. Focus on trends rather than lasting value

Parallax scrolling, long shadows, video backgrounds, sticky navigation, panoramic backgrounds, infinite scrolling, as a designer you can’t ignore these current design trends, no doubt.

The latest design trends appear on every website you open, giving you a hint of how popular they are. When you’re ready to redesign your website, they’re always the first thing to come to your mind, and they’re a natural part of your design. But remember, the primary task of a website redesign is not to show off skills, but to reorganize content to help visitors solve problems.

Here are three principles to remember: Don’t design for design’s sake; Stay loyal to your brand; Ease of use is always number one.

If the design trends really match the user’s needs and improve the overall experience, it is not unreasonable to use them. If it’s just to make the site cool, it’s debatable. What is appropriate is really good.

3. It’s all about the point

When we are told by our clients that everything they say matters, they may find themselves in a situation that requires a lot of help from us. But when you really dig deep, you’ll find out what’s really important, and what’s secondary, and even what’s not.

This happens more often than not when your stakeholders, especially Party A, provide you with information. When you start a website redesign, you may want every message to appear on the front page, and the next thing you know, the result is a horrible home page.

“If all is the point, then there is no point. – Patrick Lencioni”

This is one of the most common misconceptions, and the immediate result is a lack of hierarchy and information overload. So, you should have a focus, a core, on every page, which means that some information won’t get a lot of attention, but the user won’t get lost in the absence of a focus — at least the focus that you present will be noticed.

4. Subjective speculation

“Users will never use this content on their phones.”

This is actually a disturbing dialogue that comes up quite often. Over the past decade, when people have designed web pages for mobile, they have stripped away parts of the original web.

Of course, reducing content is usually a good thing during a redesign. However, the situation becomes slightly more dangerous when you start removing specific content based on your own subjective assumptions. It’s embarrassing for a user to scroll through a web page fine on a computer, only to find something missing when he turns on his phone.

In general, it’s not a good idea to make design assumptions without data to back them up.

Although we often claim to “stand in the perspective of ordinary users” to analyze, but as a designer and product manager, the way of thinking is very different from ordinary users, the point of focus is very different. So don’t make that assumption on behalf of real users when you’re streamlining or pruning. Try to redesign the complete process and all modules reasonably and present them on the small screen, and optimize and simplify them through user research and feedback.

5. Ignoring communication

When you’re designing a website, you’re always looking to convert regular visitors into customers, right?

Do you expect your website can bring some value for the customer, offer help, but the little “contact us” link is always in the corner, many ordinary users open a webpage, rarely continue to click, browse more people, but few consulting, real order for products and services would be much less.

So, really want to solve this problem, you need to let the user convenient to communicate with you as far as possible, to provide registration, or by mail subscription information, provide social account authorization can also, encourage users in touch with you and your web site building, even if he won’t buy the product at the moment, but left a communication channel, at least let him don’t forget your website and products.

It’s also worth noting that sites don’t usually have a single front page. Users will often go to a sub-page or a single page via a search engine. You should design these pages to have communication links or email subscriptions as well.

6. Interfering with the user experience

Yes, you should engage your users, but not at the expense of cheating them or betraying their trust.

When you get caught up in a gimmick headline and click on it only to find it’s not what you thought it was. Clickbait is boring. The same goes for finding the product or material you want through a search engine, only to have a pop-up pop up asking you to sign up, pay for it, or even have a page that isn’t relevant at all. All of these things interrupt the user experience.

It may work in the short term, but in the long term, it’s hard to retain users with a disruptive user experience.

Your site is helping users achieve their goals and gain value. Don’t disrupt their ongoing process and ruin the user experience. Treat your users with respect, and when you treat them with respect, they will give it back.

After that, attract users with higher-value products, services and content, rather than forcing them to sign up. If you really care about your users, don’t interfere with the user experience, but let them pay attention to the higher value added and better service after signing up, it’s a win-win design.

7. Not considering user transitions

Redesigning your site is certainly a good thing, but it’s debatable whether a massive change is a good thing or a bad thing for longtime users.

Ignoring the transition of existing users after redesign is a major failure in many website redesigns. For many old users, it is necessary to re-learn and get familiar with the redesign, after all, the familiar things have changed their positions, or even directly disappeared. Unexpected changes can lead to loss and frustration in the overall experience.

In fact, the solution is not complicated, the original user process is also incorporated into the design of the new website, through such functional modules as intr.js to improve the site’s new user guidance process. Other sites will allow both the old and new versions to exist, using 301 redirects to guide users from the old version to the new version to help with the transition.

【 skills more not pressure body designers have a high salary!

Medium by Steve Luvender

This article is originally translated by youset.com, please respect the copyright and translator’s achievements, please attach the youset.com link to transfer, violators will be corrected. Thank you for your cooperation.