Website redesign is usually done when businesses or individuals want the ethos of the website, its message, and its overall appeal to remain the same, but also want the design to appear fresh. They want a design that makes use of its existing concept and rework it to address the changing needs and expectations of their website visitors.

But, before the redesign process is actually underway, you will need to consider a few crucial factors that need to be considered before redesigning a custom website.

The Objective

Every purpose needs an objective. When it comes to redesign you need to have a very clear idea as to what you want accomplished. It’s your reasons and motivations that will go a long way in ensuring that the process of redesign has a clear direction. All through the process of redesign, you will need to take some crucial decisions and these can only be taken correctly if you have a clearly underlined goal for redesign.

The Extent of Redesign

You need to clearly define the nature of the redesign as to whether it’s a minor upgrade or you are overhauling the site completely. There is a very thin line between a complete site overhaul and an entirely new site. You need to consider this factor because the cost of the project and the time and effort required to bring it to fruition depend on the scope of the redesign. It’s also important to remember that the amount of changes you make is inversely proportional to the way the new website resembles the older site.

Incorporating features/Elements of Existing Site

Your older website design can offer the designing framework for the new website. So, you will need to work out which aspects of the older website do you want incorporated into the redesigned site. Just make a list of what you like about your current site and ask your re-designers to incorporate the same in the new site.

Ignoring the Non Workable Aspects

There are some aspects that work and some that don’t. Now, there might be a case wherein, you like a feature that has become redundant. Well, it’s important that when it comes to choosing the features of the current design that need to be incorporated into the redesigned site, you need to adopt a mercenary approach. Just ignore something that is non-workable irrespective of whether you like it or not.

Identifying Target Users

Don’t forget your target audience in the proceedings. You are redesigning your website for your target audience and nobody else. So, you will first need to identify them, never mind that you had identified them when you had designed your existing website. You will need to start afresh, as your target audience must have increased in the ensuing years. So, you must identify the user, recognize their needs and try and make sure that the website redesign has kept their needs in mind.

Ensuring User Friendliness

There is a tendency for both designers and the concerned clients to go one up over their existing design when it comes to redesigning it. In doing so, they add certain design complexities to the new website, which have an impact on its user friendliness. This must be avoided at all costs. The website must be user friendly, which in turn encourages a better and more satisfactory user experience.

Determine Design Focus

A website’s design, even if it’s a redesign will highlight certain sections of the website, text or images above others. So, you will need to first determine those parts of the website that need to be emphasized so that they get more user attention. There are many different ways to make this possible, so you need to choose the ways and means that suit your needs and requirements best.

These are just 7 considerations, but there are plenty of others that need to be considered before beginning the process of redesign. This will make sure that the redesign efforts do not go in vain. 

Trawl through the World Wide Web and you will find that there are plenty of shopping carts that are not treading the beaten track. They are trying to grab the attention of the visitors and sell products by trying different things. The use of unique themes, creative navigation buttons and striking visuals styles are employed to ensure that a visitor, once in the website only leaves after buying something from it. But dig a little deeper and you will find that many of these ecommerce shopping cart solutions that look different at first glance are actually doing the tried and tested things albeit accomplishing them in a different manner.

What they are actually doing is using innovative yet highly effective best practices to ensure that they become a money making machine. Now, it’s important to understand that it is far easier to read about best practices then it is to put them into practice. Also, the journey from reading about such practices and actually implementing them into ecommerce solutions is filled with ups and downs, modifications, going back to the drawing boards, twists, turns and eventually success.

Let’s take a look at some best practices that have a huge impact on what the sales figures of any ecommerce shopping cart are going to look like.

Nothing Sells like Navigation

I know it’s an oft repeated best practice but there is no getting away from the fact that any listing of such practices absolutely must contain ‘navigation’. If you are selling something on a website, you need your customers to find that product or service and this isn’t possible without navigation. It’s as simple as that and that is why convenient and easy to understand navigation is crucial for experiencing improved sales figures.  You need to provide your visitors with a quick route to any section of your site especially its products’ details and purchase page. If you don’t, say goodbye to any chance of success.

Integration of Product Videos

Why product videos, when you have high resolution product images? Well, it’s because videos make a site more interactive. But this is not the end of it. By showing product videos you are actually telling your prospective customer two important things – 1. You are proud of showcasing your products’ functionalities 2. You want them to make an informed decision while buying the products. This will go a long way in establishing a credible and successful reputation for your business. And as we all know, when it comes to business, reputation is everything.

Implementing Customer Reviews and Ratings

Never fear customer reviews. Always give your customers the option of posting reviews and it’s advisable that you don’t tinker with them -if they are critical of your products and services let them be; and if they are positive about them, all the better for you. Also this is something that is going to make your shopping cart more engaging and help facilitate a better customer interaction. More importantly, it allows you to take cognizance of the reviews and ratings and ensures that this feedback encourages the improvement of your products and services.

Design that Facilitates Decision Making

The ecommerce store is not just a platform where your products and services are displayed and sold. It also acts as a means of ‘selection of the right product’. This will only happen if the design of your ecommerce shopping solution helps your prospective customers take the right decision regarding your products and services. Now let me twist things a bit. As an online store owner you will only be successful if your visitors buy what you want to sell. So, your design must be such that it focuses the attention of your visitors on certain products, this can be done through various ways and means including providing product recommendations, offering a best-selling products list etc.

Before I end, I want to offer a note of caution – Don’t think that these are the only best practices that ensure a profitable ecommerce shopping cart solution. A successful cart is a coming together of features that are a result of numerous best practices.

The time of ordinary custom web application design & development is long gone. Today the focus is on contextual design and development. It is the rise in the popularity of mobile applications that has provided the impetus for giving importance to ‘context’ when it comes to app or web development.

Let’s focus our attention on mobile applications and why mobile applications need to be developed keeping the context in mind.

Because they are used in diverse locations

Let’s face it. We all love mobile apps because they can be used just about anywhere and at any given point of time. Yes, that’s right, they can be used in offices, on a train, in the kitchen, movie theatre and the list just goes on. So, the app needs to be developed in context of the location. Different users have different needs when it comes to a mobile app and these needs, in part, are determined by their location. For e.g. if a developer thinks a particular app that is in the process of being developed will only be used when a user is commuting, it can be configured accordingly.

Because they are used when the user is moving

Yes, movement is yet another contextual parameter when it comes to the design and development of a mobile app. Most mobile users will use their mobile devices on the move as compared to using them when they are stationary. Here again the difference in need determines the design and development of the mobile app.  During locomotion a particular mobile user might only be using one hand to operate the device because their other hand is engaged in some other activity. For example, during lunch time, many people operate their mobile device with just one hand as they are holding their lunch in the other.

Let’s illustrate this with an example. Say you want to design a mobile app that is only going to be used by air travellers, and that too especially when they are at the airport. More often than not, such travellers are going to use one hand to pull the luggage, so your app must be designed in such a manner that its controls can be used effectively with just one hand.

Because they are used when there is an immediate need

Many of the utility apps are used when a user want to use them immediately. So, out of the all the apps on the device, the user has to choose the right app at the right time and that too in quick time. This is why immediacy is such an important part of context. The user has no time to lose and that is the reason why the app needs to be designed and developed in a way such that it can anticipate the needs of the user. These needs as mentioned earlier are not only based on the user’s location but also locomotion. The reason why apps that are developed around the ‘immediacy’ parameter are so important is that many a times it’s a particular event that triggers the use of an app. For e.g. a user might want to use an app offering airline information when he misses a flight or might want to use an app offering information about emergency services if he is involved in an accident and so on and so forth.

These are just three reasons why contextual development of mobile apps is so important. You can say that the success or failure of a particular mobile app rests on whether it has been developed with reference to certain contextual parameters or not. Companies offering mobile and web development services have begun focusing their attention on this important aspect to bring forth the best apps that meet all the needs and requirements of the user.

 A web application is more about its functionality and less about its form, but there is no doubt that the design plays an important role in ensuring whether the application will be used optimally by the target user or will be ignored in place  of  a much better design. This is the reason why all reputed web development services are not only concerned about the applicability and features of the web application that they have developed but also its design and especially the design of its user interface.

Let’s take a look at three web application designing techniques that help application interfaces achieve their full potential.

On Demand Controls

Simplicity works best for interface design. One of the better ways of projecting simplicity is by making available options only if the user wants them. Interface designs make their presence felt if they make available the various interface elements only when demanded. When a user first sees the interface he/she is able to see only come controls, which makes their functionalities easier to grasp.  Once they have figure out the limited number of choices available, they can click on a particular choice to access the advanced functionality. This approach works because it helps users compartmentalize their information and take decision in a better manner.

Interface design that Make selected buttons inactive

Call it a feature of design or something else but the point is that by disabling pressed buttons makes things extremely easy for users. The reason why this needs to be done is that one of the problems that many people face is that a particular button that needs to be pressed just once is pressed more than once. In such cases, duplicated messages are sent to the application architecture to perform the same function. A case in point being duplicate submissions that result when a person presses the submit buttons more than once.

What designers do in such cases is that they create an application interface wherein once the user presses a button that is to be used just once, they ensure that it remains inactive unless and until the user needs to use the button again.

Contextual Navigation

Another great technique that helps you improve the design of your web application interface is ensuring that your navigation is contextual. What this means is that you as a designer need to think from the user’s point of view and list out what they expect to see in a given context. It is not necessary to show the same navigation controls across the whole web application. You can change the navigation controls as per the context in such a way that it is able to respond better to the users need.

You need to adopt a flexible approach and an open ended mindset for designing the perfect user interface. If you try and maneuver the various interface elements into one rigid layout, there are all chances that it won’t be able to meet its desired objectives.

Some designers believe, and I want to emphasize ‘some’ in this sentence, that Flash can only be used to display animation or videos and to enhance the visual impression of the website. But, Flash is all that and much more. It can be used to offer a striking visual experience to website visitors but at the same time it can also be used to make the user experience more interactive. No doubt, when it comes to the matter of usability and even the accessibility of the website, Flash doesn’t get full marks, but the correct use of Flash will definitely go a long way in make the website improve its interactivity and make the design more engaging for its users.

But this post isn’t about the benefits of Flash; rather it’s about the mistakes some designers tend to make when it comes to using Flash optimally. This usually happens when a designer is unable to ensure that all Flash elements such as animation, sound, video and graphics come together in the right amounts; or it can also happen when designers are not able to follow the various usability guidelines of Flash that are a prerequisite for better user interaction.

Mistake 1- When Designers Try to Imitate

Imitation is definitely the best form of flattery but not in the case of Flash especially when designers try to imitate CSS or (X) HTML. They make a cardinal sin of trying to embed long texts in Flash movies etc. because it increasingly gets difficult to work with such long texts, especially if you want to offer better usability to website visitors. One of the biggest drawbacks of such imitation is that the website’s overall experience goes for a toss as users are not able to open new links in new windows and are also unable to select or copy text. While both problems might not look so serious on one hand, they take a whole lot away from the effectiveness of the website. Imagine if your site has an enviable design but does not score high on the usability factor; what is the use of such website design?

There is no point in imitating conventional web presentation when Flash can be used to showcase heightened visuals including motion graphics, videos and sounds, and all in all, offer users stunning but unusual visual solutions.

Mistake 2 – Unimaginative and Problematic Navigation

A navigation menu plays a crucial role in the user experience of a website. Flash, if used incorrectly, can play the spoilsport when it comes to the usability of the navigation menus. Let’s first take a look at what works when it comes to flash menus.  First, they need to be intuitive, second, they need to be easy to understand and use and thirdly, they should be problem free. Many a times, designers get carried away by their own creativity and seemingly endless knowledge of Flash and built a Flash based navigation menu that is actually not navigable at all. It is completely unintuitive and instead of making things easier for visitors, makes things confusing and even disturbing.

It’s important to understand that you as a designer might want to offer your website visitors an unusual navigational menu, but not all of them will appreciate or understand it. Most website visitors won’t take time out to explore a complex Flash design. They love simplicity and your creativity must not infringe upon their ‘right to simplicity’.

Taking note of these designs will definitely help save your Flash website design from being called ineffective. It makes no sense to make all the effort to create an enviable design but lose the plot when it comes to the basics of applying Flash design.