The risks in redesign

An interesting little article about how lots of companies approach website redesign. It's about e-commerce websites, but a lot of this resonates with university web publishing too.

...there is risk in improving a site too much all at once. When you redesign processes that customers and frequent visitors have learned, even if they’re less-than-optimal processes, you introduce a new learning curve. This can, at least in the short term, negatively impact your site performance...

In the 2009 Internet Retailer survey being discussed in this article, around a third of all redesigns were to address "outdated design and graphics on home, category and product pages" rather than issues around content, information architecture or usability, which suggests redesigns being driven by gut feel rather than evidence of site usage.

Something To Think About Before You Redesign - article by Linda Bustos for Getelastic.com