Many of my long time clients (you know who you are) had us build them a website 4, 5 or more years ago. It’s possible your site might be looking a little long in the tooth if it’s been that long since you did any more than update the content periodically. While a redesign may seem daunting, remembering how much like building a house the task was the first time, it might be doing your business a favor to start planning an update now.

Some things to consider:

• If your site feels stale or cluttered when you look at it, updating the overall design while retaining the content may be all you need.
• If you now offer new services or products, and you need to remove some old content (services you no longer emphasize or references to divisions of your business or product lines that have gone away), a site design may be better than just a little bit of maintenance.
• Has your site ballooned after years of just tacking on new content, to the extent that your original navigation scheme is now inelegant?
• Do you have an articles area that has grown beyond your original expectations—would it now be more efficient to utilize a database to manage and present that material?
• Don’t lose traffic after a redesign: if you have been in business for awhile and your site enjoys good rankings, make sure your design team retains the existing names of all your site pages, or if some of those go away, install appropriate redirects.

Your site is a reflection of your company and those you serve. Polishing it through an occasional redesign is an important investment in your image.
(edit to original article by ktcosmos 3/8/07)

A great article on this topic by Jennifer Schiff was recently published at e-commerceguide.com. Here’s a link to Is Your Web Site Having a Mid-Life Crisis?
(edit to original article by ktcosmos 3/12/07)

After the article was published, Jennifer added a top ten reasons to redesign to her own blog, which you should also check out.
(edit to original article by ktcosmos 3/26/07)

Just discovered another good resource over at Essential Keystrokes. Char recently overhauled the look of her main blog (she uses WordPress) and her step-by-step list will help you if you are thinking about doing the same thing. (edit to original article by ktcosmos 4/18/07)