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January 2015
October 2013
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January 2013
December 2012
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January 7th, 2015
1. You built an MVP or a prototype of your million dollar idea. Basically this was to see if there was any potential or interest in your idea and if it could solve a problem or provide for a need out there. So, you've finally gotten validation of your idea. Now you need credibility with your interested audience and potential customers. Usually MVP's are slimmed down versions of a company's website or product where founders are trying to keep costs at a minimum. They're built to see if people would be interested in their idea or product. Now that you have found that they are, you need to redesign what you have, to actually make something viable with the needed functionality and look that people can use.
2. You're getting traffic, but your traffic isn't converting. Customers may even be browsing and navigating around your site. However, for some reason, they are not getting to the finish line. There is where a redesign paired with A/B testing works the best and should be done. Basically A/B testing is when you have two versions of a webpage or product, or different versions of its components. For example, lets say you have a signup button. You switch between a green and red button as random users come to your site to see which one has more customer sign ups. You find that the green button gets more signups so you end up going with that. This is A/B testing and this is something you can tweak and do small redesigns to various parts of your site to see what works best for your conversions.
3. The UI is too hard to navigate and get around. Customers aren't getting to where you want them to get. Your site confuses them and they can't wait to leave. Doing a UI/UX redesign could help bring better organization to your website's navigation and enhance the overall user experience. A redesign of various aspects of the sites navigation such as it hierarchical components or organization of categories could make an enormous impact on the ease of getting around on your website for users and potential customers.
4. You may want to do a website redesign to re-brand your company or product. Whether your company or business has had some negative connotations or stigma associated with it in the past or you just want to do a facelift and revamp to show your customers you are with the every changing times, doing a rebrand of your current brand will need to require a redesign. Something as small as a logo redesign or a change in your websites color scheme can help to rebrand your website and business, which is something many big companies have done in the past.
5. Finally, a reason you may want to do a website redesign, which is also a big and very good reason, is because your website is just ugly and is an eye sore. It just doesn't bring the professionalism you want to convey and looks very amateurish. You're ashamed of it so you're pretty sure your customers and visitors think the same and will be ready to click exit or go onto the next site which is probably your competitor once they come to it. This is where a major redesign would help immensely and could include a redesign of any of the aspects we previously discussed -- navigation, logo, color scheme, and then some.
A website redesign shouldn't be done just to be done and without good reason. A redesign or too much of redesign can harm you in some ways. We will touch on that in our next blog post.
Tagged:
Reasons, redesign, website
October 8th, 2013
If anyone saw what our website looked before, it was pretty atrocious. Pretty embarrassing now that I think about it. We thought we could just go with it temporarily, since we were just building our minimal viable product, but then we talked to some potential customers and they said we could lose a lot of other potential customers because it didn't convey much credibility with our current design, especially since the space, industry and market we were trying to reach had to do with logo and website design.
So we decided to do a website redesign ourselves. How were we going to do this? Well basically, using the exact same idea and concept behind our redesign marketplace. We didn't want to do like a design contest where designers would have to do free spec work for us and we could have a bunch of low quality designs we'd have to take hours to shuffle through. Instead, we wanted to have a low number of top designers go in and redesign a webpage we pick.
Since our platform wasn't ready yet, we decided to go do this the manual way. We chose our How It Works page, because that's ones of the most important pages to us and helps illustrate to our users what we do. We posted our project on a few other marketplaces and got quite a few bids for it. We went through the applicants, and based on the ones with the highest feedback and quality designs in their portfolio, we interviewed them. We asked them what was wrong with our current design and when they do the redesign, what would they do to improve it. Based on everyone we talked to, we picked the top 3 we liked the most to do this for us.
So once the redesigns were done, whoever we selected as the best one, we hired them to redesign our entire site. We also paid the winning designer for their one page redesign. Here's the other thing -- At the same time, we paid the 2 designers that didn't win a discounted amount and had them do a small tweak for us on another page. So basically in the end, everyone wins. The winner got paid for their work and was able to have ongoing work doing a complete redesign for us. The other two also got paid and we got 2 small tweaks we needed done. Finally, we had a quality page and website designed the way we wanted it to be so that we were proud to show to everyone (without having to wade through a bunch of low quality designs). And all this, for only $400.
Tagged:
redesign marketplace design process concept
February 6th, 2013
Here are some logo redesigns for mostly companies that been around for quite some time. Most are able to hit the mark by breathing some new life into its previous logo design by revamping its look for what is in the with the times, while at the same time being able to keep its identity and brand. However, all this is subjective, as what might look good to one demographic, might not look good to another. Some of these logos might be too much of a change for some people who have learned to identify with its previous image, kind of like how some of the new cars that automobile makers have come out with could be too futuristic and robotic for people to get used to, too quickly. These days, it's all about simplicity and minimalism, but the best measurement of the success of a logo redesign is by getting the growth in business and conversions that they want. What's most important is having a logo that can communicate to consumers by having them still identify with it and relate it to emotionally.
Tagged:
branding, logo, redesign
January 30th, 2013
These days, especially in these tough financial times and with the economic downturn, everyone is trying to make their dollar stretch and get the most bang for their buck for their business needs. For design and development, business owners usually turn to cheap labor to attempt to cut costs. This can include such options as outsourcing and even a growing trend that many people are beginning to explore is crowd sourcing to find designers and developers. As we all know, you get what you pay for and this usually always applies to design and development work. However, for many bootstrapped businesses who want an online presence, this is the only avenue they can turn to when trying to save money. Business owners need websites designed and built, and in turn, websites are nothing without logos and graphics. The key is to find the middle ground between what they can afford and getting the best possible quality work. That's done by deciding how much is the most they're willing to pay for something, is it worth the investment, and getting the best possible talent and result they can get from their money. Will this really nice logo increase my conversion rates or maybe something OK looking can fly for now, just as long as it's not an eyesore. Businesses can then splurge on the nice logo and user interface design later as they build their brand. They need to consider their options on where to invest their money and how it will effect their bottom line and these services give them more options.
Tagged:
crowdsourcing, design, development
December 16th, 2012
What's wrong with my design?
So let's say you have a website or logo. Something's wrong with it, but you don't quite know what. You're tired of the design or it's not the look you exactly want. Maybe the UI and navigation is clunky and cumbersome to use and to get around with. You're not getting the conversions or traffic that you want. You want to breath some new life into it and revamp it up a little bit. You're not technically savvy or a designer or a developer. Or maybe you just need a 2nd opinion or even a 3rd or 4th or even more. You want to go out and ask experts and consultants out there, "Hey, I got this page on my website. Can you tell me what's wrong with it and what can you do to fix it or improve it? The best suggestion, I will award you the job to fix it."
So that's where we come in. Consultants will help and tell you what little changes you need or if you need a total redo.
Tagged:
consulting, crowdsource, design, iterate, launch, logo, rebrand, redesign, redo, revamp, website
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