On Redesigns – A Review
There is nothing worse than a redesign. You’re used to the old thing. The old thing is recognizable and easy to navigate. You know where to walk, where to click, and where to buy your coffee.
As a copywriter I worked on a number of redesigns for anything from websites to newsletters to textbooks. I spent a lot of time thinking how I can change something to fit a new theme or to make it better. Nearly every time I worked on something for a client, they asked for it to be “more like the old thing.” And so, a redesign job didn’t mean changing everything, it just meant making enough little changes to make something similar but better. Which is a lot harder than a ground up redesign.
YouTube is kind of infamous for its redesigns. Nearly every time they make a change, there is a text-based riot in the comment section of any video. But if you go and look at screenshots of what YouTube looked like in 2007 and then 2010, you might be shocked. I definitely was. It looks better now, that’s just a plain fact. But boy was I upset when they changed it.
It takes time to get used to change, which is basically the theme of this blog. But some redesigns are just plain bad even with time.
Take for example the Southern California chain: “Poke One N Half.” Poke One N Half underwent a redesign about a year ago. I ate there maybe once or twice a month for 3 years, regularly enough to be recognized by a couple of the workers. The quality of their ingredients was notably dropping over that time period, poke, like many other food fads, was falling off a bit, so it was understandable. Their prices increased around $3 per bowl two years ago, but the ingredients stayed the same. Fair, we had a huge inflation spike, but the food continued to get worse. Ginger was given to you in packets, masago was replaced by corn, they started serving chicken, you get the picture.
Then one day I walked into Poke One N Half and the entire restaurant had changed. The floors were different, walls were painted a different color, and the menu went from clean white text on black backgrounds with orange accents to TV screens with light pink backgrounds, black text, and a lot of sideways text. The walls that were once a fun orange were now white. And they played music. Loud dance music.
I gave it a few more tries, but the food was still just getting worse. So I stopped going. The redesign made the place look worse and sort of emphasized the drop in quality I was experiencing over the last year. They made some menu changes as well, adding more affordable proteins, like a “California” mix, chickpeas, and shrimp. These proteins cost the same amount as tuna, salmon, and the dreaded cold chicken.
A lot of companies think a redesign can save their business, and sometimes they’re right. If the product is falling behind the times, a push like that can draw new visitors and maybe attract a different crowd. But when you alienate your main fanbase, you’re just trading a dwindling number of regulars for a group of first timers who might not stick around.
On top of that, a redesign can be expensive. It can really ruin habits and expectations. If it’s a product a lot of people use often, it can ruin muscle memory too, here’s looking at you Photoshop.
Often times more attention to a good product and marketing to get people in the door will solve a decline in revenue. This is why market research is so important. You can’t guess and check with a business. You have to analyze why customers are leaving and do something about it. Which is kind of hard to do when EDM is playing so loud you can’t hear the person asking for cash or card.
Anyway. Welcome to the new Something Sorensen redesign. Why’d I do the redesign? To save money. The company I made my website with started taking away features from my plan while increasing the cost. They also redesigned their user interface and added “integrated AI” that you have to use in order to use a lot of features. This AI does not work very well, I’m sure it will in time, but they lost me!
So, I had to start from scratch, and this is what I came up with. Hopefully you like it. If not, complain about it!
In honor of the new website, I’ve included a double feature! So be sure to check out the other new blog “On Satellite Cities,” a short run through of a research rabbit hole I went down.
As for the redesign, don’t fret! This will always (sometimes) be the place where you can find blogs about nonsense at random intervals.
Take care! And thanks for reading!
