What prompts a redesign of a site?

especially for design focused overhauls

[cfx211]

The online version of my hometown's newspaper has just done a major redesign of their website, widgetcity.com. It took me an extra minute to find the section I start with, and then I was annoyed that they dropped the first few lines of each story that serve as a preview for what the story is about.

After poking around, it looks like the ad spaces have increased a bit but not enough to justify a redesign, and there is no new functionality added to the site. This made me wonder why plunk down six to seven figures to redesign an online newspaper?

For people who have been through this before why or why not redesign your site if you are not changing functionality, backends, or available ad space, especially if it is a major undertaking?

I can think of a few reasons:

- improving conversion
- poor original design
- wanting take advantage of technology/design advances
- feeling your site's look has become dated
- keeping people in jobs
- reducing page weight

I am curious to understand the reasons behind design focused overhauls, and how often they achieve their goals.

[trillianjedi]

I think you have pretty much listed the lot, but they all fall under one heading and that's just "poor original design".

Except for Technological advances - but they come along, in reality, only every 5 years or so anyway.

Keeping people in jobs though?! I'm not that charitable!

TJ

[cfx211]

If you were the department head of a website that had a large corporate parent, you would think about keeping people in jobs by doing a redesign. When its your money its a different story.

So if the reasons are simple enough, then what are the triggers that makes people say enough is enough let's rebuild this ugly thing?

[martinibuster]

Looks can appear dated, no question about it. A website designed last year may have been following a design trend from the year before. So in actuality, though the site is a year old, the trend from which the design came from is a stale two years old.

It's the same thing that motivated us years ago to trade in the bell bottoms for the Levis 501 jeans.