This document discusses how long websites typically last before needing to be redesigned or rebuilt. It begins by explaining that technology does not last forever and websites, being technological platforms, are subject to becoming outdated as expectations and capabilities change. It then discusses five key factors that influence when a site may need an overhaul: technological changes, design shifts, content updates, changing user expectations, and evolving devices. The document also explores the benefits of a full rebuild versus a lighter "realignment". Overall, it argues that websites must be continually evolved and optimized to avoid becoming obsolete.

1. HOW LONG DO WEBSITES LAST?
and when is it time to redesign

3. ABOUT ME
➤ Dan Moriarty,
@minneapolisdan
➤ Creative Director and Founder
of Electric Citizen
➤ Working on Strategic Planning
and UX Design
➤ Build first website in 1998

4. ABOUT ELECTRIC CITIZEN
➤ Minneapolis-based digital
agency, @elecitizen or http://
www.electriccitizen.com
➤ Strategy, Planning, Design,
Development, Support
➤ Specialize in Civic Sector
and Drupal
➤ Clients such as UMN, Century
College, Viterbo University,
City of Bloomington,
American Swedish Institute

5. WHAT WE’LL DISCUSS
➤ What to expect for your
website's lifespan
➤ Signs that your site is
nearing the end
➤ When to rebuild vs
realign
➤ Ways to keep your site
alive and kicking

6. YOUR SITES WON’T
SHOULDN’T LAST
FOREVER
(as-is)

8. HOW LONG DO WEBSITES LAST?
and when is it time to redesign

9. 1. TECH
DOESN’T
LAST
all good things must pass

10. CONSIDER THE SMARTPHONE
raise your hand if you own one
keep your hand up if it’s older than 1 year. 2 years. 3? 4? Any older than 2011?

11. TECH DOESN’T LAST (CONT.)
➤ If you do have an older smartphone,
what is your experience using it? Why
do people bother upgrading over and
over again?
➤ Things get slower
➤ Apps start to crash
➤ You want a smaller phone/
bigger phone.
➤ Better features (e.g. camera
resolution)
➤ New features (e.g. fingerprint
recognition)
➤ You don’t HAVE to upgrade to a new
phone. But at some point, you start to
get left behind.

12. EXPECTATIONS SHIFT
➤ Expectations about your
technology change
➤ What was an acceptable before
is no longer ok. These include:
➤ UI
➤ Performance
➤ Features
➤ Appearance

13. WHAT ABOUT
YOUR WEBSITE?
www.mysite.com, established in 2012

14. TECH DOESN’T LAST (CONT.)
➤ What was new 3 years ago can
seem dated and slow today. How
does that relate to your website?
➤ A website IS technology. But is
something more too – content,
brand, design, users, devices.
This means it’s even easier to
fall behind and more work to
keep up.
➤ Let’s explore the lifespan of
modern website, and how to
keep yours from dying, or simply
existing like some browser-
based zombie.
A website is
technology. But
is something
more too –
content, brand,
design, users,
devices, etc.

15. IS YOUR SITE LIKE A NEW IPHONE? OR AN OLD FLIP PHONE ?
➤ Think of your company’s
website like a smartphone. Is
it like a brand-new iPhone6 or
an old flip phone?
➤ Which best serves the needs
of your audience?
➤ What offers the better user
experience?
➤ Would you hand your
customer a mobile phone
from 2011 and tell them to
buy something online? To
browse the web? To use Skype
or Twitter or Facebook? Take a
video and post it to YouTube?
➤ Would you work with a 5 year
old mobile device and expect
the same great user
experience as a new phone?
But how many do this with
their websites?

16. 2. TIMES ARE
(ALWAYS)
A’CHANGING
“you better start swimmin'
or you'll sink like a stone”

17. Quick Poll: How Old Is Your Site?
First, those who build sites for others. What’s the oldest, unchanged
site that you built still running?
Next, for everyone working at an company/organization. When was
the last redesign of your site? 1 year? 2? 3-4? 5-6? No idea?

18. YOU ARE ON THE CLOCK!
➤ From the time your site first
launches, you are on the clock
➤ What was new is soon old
➤ Cutting edge features and
functionality 3-4 years ago
may now seem clunky and
hard to use
➤ Expectation change, as a
customer of your site AND as
an editor of your site

19. WHAT’S CHANGED FOR WEBSITES THE PAST FEW YEARS?
➤ Responsive Design
➤ Mobile first
➤ End of Flash
➤ Flat design
➤ Full screen images
➤ Background videos
and images
➤ Sass and Less
➤ Accessibility
➤ Content written for the web
➤ Usability, trends towards
larger type
➤ CMS powered sites
➤ JavaScript Libraries
➤ Search engine algorithms
➤ Social media
➤ Anything else?

20. 1) TECH CHANGES
➤ We’ve looked at changes to
site code, site builds. How
should you respond?
➤ Can you make changes
incrementally? Depends on
how far behind you are
➤ Just like repairing a car, at
some point you’re spending
more on repairs than it would
be to get a new one
➤ Switching to Drupal, dynamic
CSS, mobile-first approach—
all may require a full rebuild

21. OK, TECH CHANGES. IS THAT ALL? NO!
➤ So far we’re talking mostly
development/tech reasons
to redesign and rebuild.
➤ But as we said, websites are
more than just HTML.
What about the UI? design?
content? performance? the
end users? devices?
➤ There are other changes we
need to consider
➤ Tech/code
➤ Design
➤ Content
➤ User
➤ Device

22. 2) DESIGN CHANGES
➤ When you think design updates, where
does your mind go?
➤ Look and feel, colors, graphics, video,
images. Following the latest trends.
➤ Why follow trends? Because your job as
an organization is offer goods or services
that your customers or clients feel
confident about using.
➤ They need to trust you, and know you are
competent. That you care about how you
look. That you are professional. And
showing up in the equivalent of a pair of
parachute pants from 1984 isn’t going
work.(usually)
➤ Even if a casual or off-the-wall look and
feel is appropriate for your organization,
that doesn’t mean it doesn’t need to
change.

23. 3) CONTENT CHANGES
➤ Is your content written for
mobile users?
➤ Chunking content, keeping
it short and to the point.
➤ Can your users find the
content they are looking for?
➤ Look at analytics, do user
testing, adjust site
navigation, search
➤ Is your copy effective?

24. 4) USER CHANGES
➤ Both consumers and editors have
expectations changed over time,
for what a website should do
AND how it should managed
➤ Not requiring knowledge of
HTML (WYSIWYG)
➤ Loading and editing images online
➤ Editing website content online
➤ Editing website content on a
mobile device
➤ Editing content inline, right on
the page, with no page refresh
➤ Personalization of site content

25. 5) DEVICE CHANGES
➤ Monitors come in many
different sizes
➤ Mobile devices of different
widths mean content needs to
work at any size. Media needs
to work at any size.
➤ Speed of connections and
devices
➤ Location aware devices
➤ Touch sensitive devices

26. HAVE YOU KEPT UP WITH
ALL THESE CHANGES?
Tech • Design • Content • Users • Devices

27. 3. TIME TO
REBUILD?
Is it a tear-down or
fixer-upper?

28. YOU NEED TO REBUILD
EVERY…
➤ 2 years?
➤ 3 years?
➤ 4 years?

29. TRENDS IN SITE REBUILDING
➤ Many people are saying you
should do this every 2-3 years
➤ http://blog.hubspot.com/
marketing/website-redesign-
timelines
➤ Some say every 18-24 months.
Think of all the changes in
past 2 years. Mobile users
jumped from 10% to 25% of
all Web traffic.
➤ But there is no magic number!

30. WHEN IS IT TIME?
➤ Don’t redesign just because it’s
been a while
➤ When you replace it depends
on how we'll you’ve cared for it
and what you’re trying to
achieve
➤ If your site is no longer serving
your audience the best it could,
and the path is improvement is
long, it’s time to redesign.
➤ Remember user expectations
shift, tech changes, design
trends change, devices change

31. EXPECTATIONS SHIFT
➤ What was an acceptable before
is no longer ok. These include:
➤ UI
➤ Performance
➤ Features
➤ Appearance
➤ Content

32. WHEN IS IT TIME?
“Don’t redesign
just to do
something new,
redesign because
you have a better
answer to the
question.”
– Paul Scrivens

33. WHEN TO REDESIGN?
➤ Obvious problems with site
functionality
➤ Not responsive, mobile-first
➤ Site loads slowly
➤ Can’t easily add new
functionality
➤ Editors can’t easily manage
site content
➤ Traffic is down
➤ Pages are getting cluttered
➤ Compares poorly to your
competitors
➤ Rebranding, or your
purpose has changed
➤ Bad User Experience
➤ The Tech/UX “Debt” List Is
Long* (more on this)

34. “Over the course of building a product or website, an
organization begins to accrue tech and UX debt.
This debt is made up of all the things you should have
done during the initial build but either didn’t get around
to or had to cut corners on in order to ship the product on
time. Each subsequent iteration inevitably adds more debt
to the list.
Your website gets to the point where starting over would
be cheaper than fixing all of the items on your debt list
– Jeff Gothelf
https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/12/clear-indications-time-to-redesign/
TECHNICAL DEBT

35. PLANNING YOUR REDESIGN
➤ Define the purpose of your
site
➤ Study analytics
➤ Website audit - both pages
and content
➤ Study comparable
➤ Sitemap
➤ Wireframe
➤ Surveys
➤ User Testing

36. NY TIMES REDESIGN
➤ Full redesigned site in 2014,
with the hope to never do so
again (on the same scale)
➤ "We have completely
replatformed the whole back-
end technology system so that
we can get out of the business
of doing redesigns"
– Denise Warren New York Times
➤ You can learn about it at
http://www.nytimes.com/
redesign

37. NY TIMES REDESIGN (CONT.)
➤ Changes included:
➤ New CMS
➤ Cleaner pages, no sidebars or headers
➤ No pagination on articles
➤ Optimized for smartphones and tablets
➤ Options to view larger media
➤ New approach to browsing
➤ Ribbon featuring stories based on how the
reader clicked into the story
➤ Related content widget next to story
➤ Arrow to the right of the page is a 3rd
option to move from story to story

38. NY TIMES REDESIGN (CONT.)
➤ They couldn’t have introduced
these changes without a full
redesign.
➤ The changes they did were to
provided a great user experience,
taking into account new patterns
of UX/UI that didn’t exist before.
➤ related content
➤ no sidebars
➤ full screen media
➤ sliding, offscreen content
➤ collapsed menus

39. “At its core, a website is a communication tool. If it’s
difficult for users to communicate with your brand
digitally, you’re going to lose sales.
– Gabriel Shaoolian
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gabriel-shaoolian/5-reasons-why-you-should-_12_b_9460374.html

40. 4. HOW
ABOUT WE
“REALIGN”
INSTEAD?
Take the easier road

41. WHY NOT FULL REBUILD?
➤ Completely rebuilding a site is a
disruptive experience
➤ People don’t always like change. They
may react negatively. As Jakob Nielsen
says, “Users hate change, so it's
usually best to stay with a familiar
design and evolve it gradually.”
➤ Users don't care about design for its
own sake; they just want to get things
done and get out.
➤ Other reasons include:
➤ Search engine rank can suffer
➤ Users can’t find what they need
➤ It’s expensive and a lot of f***ing
work

42. BENEFITS OF REALIGNING
➤ You just don’t know what works
until you try it.
➤ Iterate on site, adjusting to
feedback and analytics, A/B test
➤ You can’t always predict what
design, headline, or copy will
perform best.
➤ Small simple fixes can
(sometimes) accomplish far more
than expensive redesigns. Faster
to rollout.
➤ amazon.com is an example of
iterating. Same basic design,
endlessly tweaked over time

43. TRY FINE TUNING
➤ Most website owners don’t know how to
diagnose, much less solve, the problems
of a large complex website.
➤ “Without proper diagnostics…any
resulting improvements to the user
experience will be almost accidental.”
– Louis Rosenfeld, Smashing Magazine
➤ You don’t have to solve everything!
➤ Content: A small portion of your
website’s content does all the work.
The rest has little or no value at all.
Focus on the stuff that people actually
use and need.
➤ Audiences: one or two matter far
more than the others. Focus on those.
➤ Prioritize: focus your efforts on a few
key problems

44. NEW DESIGN FOR NEW USERS APPROACH
➤ Current users are accustomed
to the old site design but new
users haven’t had the chance to
learn it yet.
➤ What if your redesign was only
for new users, while keeping the
old site up for older users?
➤ 37signals did this with a new
Basecamp release. A rewrite
from the ground up, it has an
entirely new interface. They
didn’t force their existing users
to switch. They just put the new
version out for new customers.

45. WHEN REDESIGN > REALIGN
➤ Jacob Nielsen lists two cases where a full
redesign makes more sense than a realign:
➤ “If you have almost no current users and
expect a major design improvement to
dramatically expand the user base. In this
case, the business loss from punishing your
current customers is small enough to be
worth taking. Of course, it's still a gamble
that you'll actually be able to attract a vastly
bigger audience. Remember the old adage: a
bird in the hand is better than two in the
bush. Unless you're sure that there are
millions of users in that bush, you might not
want to go there.”
➤ “If your old design has incrementally evolved
for so many years that the overall user
experience has become overly convoluted and
lost any sense of a unified conceptual
structure”. (e.g. Microsoft Office 2003)
➤ https://www.nngroup.com/articles/fresh-vs-
familiar-aggressive-redesign/

46. NOT AN EITHER-OR
➤ Despite the clear benefits of a
realign strategy, it’s never an
either/or, between Redesign
and Realign.
➤ Knowing when to redesign or
realign often comes down to:
➤ Cost (is it cheaper to simply
start over?)
➤ Inability to change or adapt
within current codebase
➤ Technical Debt is too large

47. WEBSITES ARE NEVER
“DONE”
At launch time, no one knows for certain what the best approach is.
We carefully estimate and try. We need to iterate– observe, adjust,
and try again.

48. 4. HOW TO
STAY ALIVE
escape the walking dead

49. SIGNS YOUR SITE IS DYING
➤ Traffic is down
➤ Audience participation is down
➤ Lack of updates to dynamic
content (blog, news, events)
➤ Fails to work on new devices,
or adapt to new features
➤ Software is out-of-date,
security patches haven’t been
applied. CMS is no longer
supported
➤ Fails to meet changing
expectations

50. GET BUSY LIVING OR GET BUSY DYING
➤ Websites that aren’t
continually updated and
maintained are dead or dying
➤ It doesn’t matter if it’s
“timeless content” or a
“timeless design” —
something will change and
you need to react to it
➤ This does NOT simply mean a
different news story or slider
on the homepage. It means
carefully planned, carefully
executed, regular updates.

51. YOUR WORK IS NEVER DONE. :(
➤ “Your website should be a
living, breathing, changing
being. Edit and improve
constantly.” – Mike Volpe,
Hubspot
➤ Redesigns are not the same as
maintenance. Routine
updating is something all
websites require. You need to
plan for both.

52. LIVING THE GOOD LIFE
➤ Budget time to your site for
content updates
➤ Pay attention to users and
analytics; pay attention to
competitors
➤ Keep up with trends in
technology, design,how people
consume the web
➤ Keep your code up to date
➤ Continuous Improvement
➤ User testing, feedback

53. BUDGET FOR NOW AND FUTURE
➤ Budget time/money for
continuous improvement to
your website
➤ Budget for analytics (traffic,
site speed, site security,
content effectiveness)
➤ Budget for periodic redesigns.
Preferably to specific areas of
your site rather than a whole
‘scrap and rebuild.’ But
sometimes that’s the only way.

54. CONCLUSION
➤ Expectations are constantly
shifting
➤ Your website will need
continuous attention. Budget
for it and plan to continuously
test, improve and update.
➤ Realign early and often
➤ Keep track of what’s working
and what’s not through
periodic checkups. Just like
going to the doctor or getting
your oil changed.
➤ Decide if a full rebuild would
be more effective than
realignment. Is this car worth
repairing or should you just
get a new one?
➤ Keep your site alive and plan
to eventually replace it. When
you replace it depends on how
we'll you’ve cared for it and
what you’re trying to achieve.

55. Questions?
Dan Moriarty, @minneapolisdan

56. REFERENCED
➤ https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/12/clear-
indications-time-to-redesign/
➤ http://uxmyths.com/post/712537920/myth-you-need-to-
redesign-your-website-periodically
➤ https://blog.kissmetrics.com/dont-do-a-redesign/
➤ https://articles.uie.com/radical_redesign/
➤ https://www.nngroup.com/articles/fresh-vs-familiar-
aggressive-redesign/