Site redesign - am I an idiot?

[elklabone]

Hi everyone,

Our site (in the signature) ranks very well for our target keyword. We have ranked well for a couple of years now. We've got a lot of good incoming links.

At the bottom of my homepage you'lll find a link to what I'd like to use for a "new layout" for the site. Still under construction.

Here's my question/comment.

The old site has been around for years. It's dated, and not very pretty. The new layout (or something similar to it) is probably more professional, and would probably bring us more business.

However, this site is our livelihood, and I'd feel like a real bozo with a nice looking new layout and be on the bottom of page 1,250.

In other words, I'm scared to change anything, other than make minor text changes from time to time. Am I being prudent? Or am I worried about nothing?

--Mark

[david_sakh]

wow that redesign looks very nice...

I don't make any claims to SEO know-how, so I won't give you any real advice. Just makes sure that the actual content is as high up as it used to be and you are optmizing for the same keywords. I wouldn't reccomend any changes until someone like Mistral, Compar, or McDar comments on this post, just regurgitating what I've been told.

[Cartman]

Call me crazy, but I like your original site design better..

[Crazy_Rob]

This discussion is somewhat related:

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=9469

[nullbit]

My critique of the Alpha design:

- The double colon separators (top grey navigation bar), look kinda out of place on your site.

- The large header image at the top seems unnecessary. If you do keep it, I think decreasing the JPEG compression would be good, I can see obvious artifacts, which spoil the professional layout slightly. Also, maybe auto-adjust the contrast/colour/brightness levels with photoshop, or something similar.

Those are really small issues (others will probably disagree with my comments, anyway). The remaining seems well thought out, and looks professional.

[LogoMaid.com]

Hi,

Your header picture is a bit blury...maybe try some sharpen effect on it
Also dont'l like opacity on 3 middle pictures.
Content is nice and clean, maybe place here something dominant (picture with your advantages, prices...)

Jan

[e10]

I agree with Cartman,

I like your original design better. I´d take a wild guess and say you are ranking with the old design for the product name but less well for generic weight loss. Am I right?

If so, why not revamp your old design but build in some seo elements for a wider set of phrases related to weight loss. e.g. on every page I visited the product name was the primary keyword in the title. That´s great if you only want to sell to previous customers.

What about before and after pictures, a forum, etc. Look at Atkins and South Beach websites. They have rabidly faithful forum members that sell the regime to any casual surfer.

[Design Agent]

1. Be careful if your page names/ site structure are different.. even if its just the extensions. Use permanent redirectes - Im sure you can find what code you should use.
2. Keep most of your keywords as close as they currently are.
3. Add EXTRA content.
4. Leave a link to the old site - keeps the pages in the engines and means that if you switch back those pages should not need reindexed.
5. Do some offsite promotion after relaunch, incase you have dropped for some of your terms, least you might be able to bounce back quicker. If not it will help you rank anyway.
6.Cross your fingers and be prepared to switch back.

[onestop]

Don't switch, your original design (green) is better. Try to work on optimization on your current site. good luck.

[Crazy_Rob]

This thread was started 2 months ago.

:)

[sadcox66]

I like the original site better

[Cartman]

Guess I'm not crazy after all.. :)

[e10]

This thread was started 2 months ago.

:)


Hmm, yes CR so it was. Looks like my fault for reviving it. sorry ´bout that but I jumped there from the related links on the bottom of another thread and didn´t even look at the dates.

I guess an update from Elkbone would be interesting.

[elklabone]

I don't mind it getting bumped up again, I appreciate all of the feedback. We're probably not going to make any major changes right now because we're ranking well, and don't want to make the Google gods angry. I'd still like to switch to the newer layout at some point in the future, but just because I prefer it to the older layout, but wouldn't want to jeopardize our rankings, so I'm not in a hurry.

If the layout was changed, but if the text stayed about the same would that possibly be safer? I would assume so.