No matter how successful a website is at its creation, on average, after five years, it becomes outdated: your business expands, technology becomes more advanced, and user devices become more powerful.
It allows it to remain relevant and gain the trust of users. For this purpose, it is necessary to carry out an app redesign.
The life cycle of any website or app can be divided into six stages:
- Idea
- Design
- Development
- Promotion
- Maintenance
- Termination
The sixth stage is essentially the final “shelf life” of the site. To prolong the life of the site/application will help with competent redesign. However, this process has its pitfalls that you should be aware of. In addition, given the cost of UI, the product owner needs to realize that it will lead to the following consequences.
The first and most important is that people prefer to keep things the same. Using an application often enough, a person gets used to the functionality and notices even minor changes. Noticing a difference in the way of accessing any function, the user will get lost and annoyed. Thus, micro-aggression will occur. And if the changes are too severe, users may even stop using your platform.
Adding little contextual clues is worth it if you want to change the site/app globally. They will help you understand the changes faster.
And now, let’s look at the main reasons why the app redesign process can fail.
The Site May Lose Search Engine Positions
If your redesign involves changing URLs, thanks to which you get most of your traffic, you should be very sensitive to the critical page addresses and set up redirects. When set up correctly, SEO will be fine.
In Everything New, There Are Usually More Mistakes Than in the Old One
It applies to the technical part of the project. In a world where a website or app shouldn’t take longer than three seconds to load, having bugs is a killer for traffic.
The platform gets overloaded because developers and designers often want to fit in the best of everything. Over time, bugs that may have been missed during development become apparent, and the system starts working much slower. Thus, half of the target audience needs to be recovered.
To avoid problems due to redesign errors, test in several stages before launching the update. It is best to use a group of users specially allocated for testing. Or throw a beta version and monitor the audience’s reaction.
Lagging Behind Trends
If you don’t follow design trends but decide to redesign your website or app, you may be in for a letdown. There is a high probability that your design will need to be updated, so there is a risk of losing all the traffic.
Therefore, when changing the appearance of an app on your smartphone screen, you should consider the operating system (iOS or Android) and how popular apps or websites look on them.
By making the functionality similar to high-conversion platforms, you simplify your update, which will undoubtedly go to the “plus.” The main thing is not to copy someone else’s design and functionality but to be inspired by them and make it better.
Failure to Hit the Target Audience
Before you change anything, carefully analyze your audience and what they like. Learn to understand them and give them what they want.
Color is of utmost importance for a website or app. The color scheme should not just be “pretty” but also reflect the theme of the business. Moreover, it must match the target audience. Therefore, when changing the primary colors, please consider their psychological impact on the user.
Problems in Implementation
By creating something exciting, designers or developers can “overdo it.” Such a design is tough to implement into the system, causing all sorts of bugs, or the platform won’t launch.
A good example is the redesign of Skype. The redesign affected the system’s appearance, which became much more uncomfortable, and the tech stack because Skype began to hang and work worse.
Useless Redesign
There are known examples when the redesign is done only to make the site look new while updating only the colors, shape of buttons, and logo. This approach brings only disadvantages to the business, as time and budget were spent, and the attendance at the site remained at the same level or even fell.
Underestimating the importance of testing
Another common trap is insufficient testing of an updated app before release. Companies often need more quality and long-term testing to release a new version faster.
However, this can lead to numerous bugs and usability issues. Take enough time to test on all devices and platforms involving different users thoroughly. It will allow you to identify non-obvious problems and avoid negativity from the audience after the release.
If you decide to redesign a website or app, it’s worth thinking clearly about how to improve the look and feel (UI) but also the functionality of the site (UX).
Conclusion
Although the app redesign brings tangible benefits, it is always associated with the abovementioned risks. To avoid this, you need to choose a competent design agency. It will help you avoid mistakes and increase attendance and conversion rates. These actions will make your resources better.