Redesigning May Be Harmful to Your Web Site’s Health

Three lessons to avoid a competitive disaster.

By Ava Seave
01/07/2009 -04:59 PM

A recent article in Wired about how an unpopular redesign of the social networking site UrbanBaby inspired two former users to construct a direct competitor is a cautionary tale. According to the author, Clive Thompson, the ad-free competitor YouBeMom is giving UrbanBaby a run for its money.

 There are three clear lessons from this competitive disaster:    

(1) Where was the testing or surveying activity before the design change? YouBeMom is so graphically ugly, clearly function was much more important than design attributes for this audience. Especially with a digital product where the customers are cheap and easy to talk to, it’s crazy to make redesign changes without thorough research.   

(2) The UrbanBaby redesign came after the site was purchased by (a relatively big) company CNet. In “rolling up” content sites, bigger companies have been known to make changes based on the tastes and conveniences of the new over bosses without respect for the community already collected by the tastes of the current content managers. Resist remaking the look and feel in order to please yourself or your new Art Director. 

 (3) As great as it is when the “network effect” of social sites brings people to a property, it is devastating when the same network effect makes it easy for a rapid escape—and for a competitor to tap into the social web for its own purposes. The fragility of social network sites is understated in the rush for all sorts of businesses—media, retail, even consumer package goods—to invest in building them.

Ava Seave is a Principal of Quantum Media, a strategy and marketing consulting group.