Changing Site Design – Things to Note- Part 1

Jeffery Bryant    – Raleigh, NC
123Triad: Web Design & SEO Company

Changing Site Design – Things to Note- Part 1

If ones website has been around for a long time, one probably will be tempted, at some point, to change his website’s design. It may be due to change in his tastes or some other reason like he may have learned with time the design of his web site is not ideal for his purpose. In this article I list some things one might want to look out for when he is planning a redesign of his website.

1. Should have a good reason

   Regular visitors to ones site generally do not like huge changes to the design of the site, because with time, they have learnt ones site’s idiosyncrasies and also have figured out how to navigate the site and do things. Changing a sites design arbitrarily on a whim may actually not do much positive addition because it may alienate ones frequent visitors.

   This by no means does not mean that one can not change his site for the better or just to make it look better..  When one does so however, he should try to minimize problems for his regular visitors by putting the elements of navigations of his site in the standard places. To take an example, items like the navigation menu bars appear either on the right column, left column, bottom or top of millions of websites around the world. Although there exist no rules regarding where one must place these particular elements, to put them in the usual places means that one makes it easier for his visitors to move around his site. When one is embarking on a major site redesign, he will want to reduce the irritation of long-time users of his site may feel when they suddenly encounter a page that has many elements has moved.

   Here are some good reasons for one to redesign his site.

   o Make it more customer-friendly or user-friendly.
   
   A site should be redesigned such that it attracts more customers. This can be done by ensuring that it is easy for a client to navigate through ones site. Redesigning ones site to improve its customer friendliness or usability is a very valid reason for changing the design. In fact, changing the design in this kind of case will not detract ones regular visitor’s experience but will improve it.

   o Make it more accessible.
   o Alternatively, one may want to redesign his website so as to ensure its accessibility is improved. Just like the reason of changing the site design for improving usability, this is also a good reason for one to modify his site. In general, this kind of change will also make a site more friendly to the search engine as discussed in the next point.

   o To Make a Site More Search-Engine Friendly
   
   A web site should be redesigned such that the search engines can not have a problem dealing with it.

2. Minimizing URLs Changes

   When one is redesigning a website, many webmasters usually feel that they should take the opportunity so they can fix the lousy URLs or the possibly the structure of the web site that is -ill-thought which they created earlier. For example, with time, one may have learnt that his site can be organized more logically by putting particular files in a certain directory (folder) instead of other files. Or one may want to change his web pages filenames so they can describe their contents better.

   The temptation to do the structural change I have talked about when redesigning can be very overwhelming, and I must confess too that I have fallen into the same trap.

   However, to speak generally, to change URLs and the structure of a site is not a good idea. When one moves URLs, the reputation that his old page has established in the search engines tends to be lost as the links that point to it from other web sites will not be transferred to page that is new unless one takes special precautions. If one does not know why links from other sites are vital, he should refer to the earlier article on Improving the site Ranking on Google.

   However all is not lost if one feels strongly he has to move an old page. To minimize issues when one is moving, one will need to redirect all requests from the old page to the new one. Adding a link to the old page pointing to the new one is not enough. One needs to make an indication to the search engine and his visitors that his old page that the location of his old page has permanently changed location. In my opinion, the best way to do this, if ones website is running on an Apache web server, is that he creates a .htaccess file in the old pages directory, having the following contents:

   Redirectpermanent /old-folder-name/oldfilename.html

   http://www.example.com/new-folder-name/newfile.html

   Replace the folder, file, and domain names with the appropriate ones for ones site.

123Triad webdesign offers affordable custom website design. Our full service website design company only hires certified website designers. Please contact us today on 1-800-720-0816 for your next web site design project.

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