Jim Walton asks an interesting question over on his blog in reference to website design and the longevity of a particular style.

"how does a site like Google or Yahoo! get away with maintaining the same look for years, yet we still keep going back?"

The bottom line is that they have a service that we want. I have a Google Deskbar installed on my system which is just a single input box in the Tasks Bar and I use that for a lot of my searches. It's a simple design but it works. I don't care what Google looks like as long as it works and is clear and easy to read. I think that Google and Yahoo! were blessed by having gone for quite a simple, clear, clean design straight off the mark - no confusing menus or navigation systems there, just clear, simple text links that look the way we expected them to. It's allowed them to add a shed load of services and features to the site easily without having to change the look or feel of the site too much (when I get around to redesigning this darn blog I want a much cleaner, clearer look and feel).

I'll add my 2 cents on the web redesign thing ... many people with a website think that visitors come to the site because of good design and stay away because of bad design. I'm hoping that the popularity of blogs and blogging is beginning to show people that content is king that that people come for the content and stay because of the content. The best design is the design that blends into the background. It's the content that should leap out at the reader while the design just makes the transfer of information easier (for example, black text against a white background works well for most people while black against black doesn't!). When people have a site that's quite their first reaction usually is to redesign rather than look at the content and figure out what might attract people to the site and keep them there. I can't think of anyone who keeps on revisiting a website because it looks so darn stylish! They come for the contents.

Note: Another reason why a redesign might actually cause a drop in visitors is that most web designers change the file and directory structure which means that any progress they made in the search engines is lost.

Finally, countless webmasters confuse a site redesign with updating - it's important to keep on adding to the site and keeping it current in-between redesigns. In fact, the truth is that the more you update your site the less it needs redesigning! I've come across loads of sites that think that an update has to involve changing how the site looks and operates and instead of adding content the first thing they do is chuck out all the existing stuff (usually because their site is a static HTML site and the content is all locked up in with the HTML - go PHP or ASP and separate layout from content!).

As I said, my 2 cents, no refunds! HonorTagJournalistHonorTagProfessionalPC DoctorPC DoctorWeb Design

This entry was posted on Monday, August 22nd, 2005 at 18:10 and is filed under PC Doctor's Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.