When you have a website built, and a whole new web design created from scratch, you may find yourself thinking of a question that many clients have asked themselves and web agencies. “How often should the website be redesigned?” After all, you’ve invested quite a bit into a good quality site design, and it’s important that you manage to get a return on your investment. Some people assume that building the website and design is the bulk of the work, and all they have to worry about afterwards is online marketing.
However, because of the evolution of web design trends, you may find that your site’s current design may become obsolete in a short span of time. So to answer your initial question, the truth of the matter is, there is no definite answer. It depends on the industry, and how often it can change. But a safe number to provide would be about two to five years.
That is a rather broad time frame, so it might help if there were indicators that might show you that it’s time to give it a redesign. However, if you feel like it’s too soon, or you feel like you can still get some use out of your web design, there are ways to extend the lifespan of your site design without a complete redesign.
Add new content
Adding fresh, up-to-date content is one of the easiest, yet most efficient ways of giving your site a boost without having to go through a complete redesign. Updating other visual content like images and video can also give your site a newer look. This is also great if you’re planning on updating your website, as this newer content can be used to add to the new site’s content.
Trim down links
Some older sites have a tendency to have too many links to different pages. This is usually a result of wanting to have as much information on the website as possible. While it is definitely a good thing to be informative on your company website, having too many links up on the website gives off the impression of clutter.
The recent web design trends nowadays lean more towards a design that makes heavy use of negative space and giving elements enough room to breathe. Remove the least popular links to bring more relevance to the links that are left behind.
Make a few aesthetic changes
It is possible to make a few web design changes without resorting to a complete redesign. You can change the styling a little by changing up the fonts and tweaking the color palette to match the current style. This can give your website a refreshing new look.