When you’re undergoing a rebranding process, you have to think carefully about what to change, what to keep, and what kind of forms you’re planning on keeping those things in. Change too much and your audiences might not recognize you as the same brand anymore – losing everything that they enjoyed about you in the first place. However, if you don’t change enough, then the old problems remain and the whole exercise might start to feel redundant.
This is a sprawling consideration, so to begin with, it might be best to focus your efforts specifically on your business website and what it might look like after all is said and done.
What’s Different?
You want your new website to be better in all of the ways that matter. That means introducing new elements that you can be confident about and tightening the screws down in areas where you feel as though you slightly missed the mark before. Perhaps the information could be better presented under a smaller number of headings – or perhaps you feel as though in your effort to compress information before, you went too far and missed out on crucial details.
It could also be that this time around, you want to put a greater emphasis on what web design is really capable of. After all, you might be in a much better position now than you were the first time you went about constructing your website – this overhaul might be all about showcasing the new and improved you. So, that might mean leaning into some web design elements like APIs to create a more competitive and engaging experience for your users. For this to land with all of the impacts that you’re hoping for, though, you also need to consider what an API security company could do to minimize the risk of problems arising here.
Aesthetic Considerations
To some people, a lot of web design is in the aesthetics. It’s arguably the first thing that users are going to notice. If it’s not ambitious enough, it might turn them away, but if it’s trying too hard to grab your attention, then it’s going to have the same effect. Identifying a middle ground is important but you also want to be aware that many businesses will be aiming for this exact same middle ground, which makes finding one that’s more unique to you a difficulty.
Sometimes, it’s just about rejuvenation. You and your audiences might be familiar with the way that your brand looks by now – and the way that your website looks. When you overhaul your brand and you bring in a new logo, that’s a perfect opportunity to completely change the aesthetic of your website as well. You still want it to be in keeping with your brand, but what your brand is has changed, which gives you room to lean into slightly different aesthetic choices and designs, trying something new that might be a better fit than what you were working with before.
What’s the Same?
There will always be things that audiences expect from your business. Even over the years, as more and more changes incur and your business begins to feel like Theseus’ Ship, there will be fundamental elements that are absolutely irremovable from your brand. People don’t go to McDonald’s for fine cuisine; they go because it’s cheap, fast, and hits that fast food pleasure center in the brain. If that suddenly changed, audiences would be confused, and the niche that McDonald’s filled in the wider industry is going to be vacated.
It’s important to remember what you’re trying to do differently – and why. You’re trying to make improvements; you’re not trying to get rid of absolutely everything, especially not what already works. So, when you turn your attention to your website, you have to ask what you got right the first time. It might be that your last website was literally your first attempt, in which case there might be plenty that you’ve grown unhappy with or that you feel has become outdated. However, it’s important to remember that you don’t need to change elements just for the sake of changing them. If you have a webchat that gets a lot of use from those visiting the contact page, it could potentially stand to remain mostly untouched.
How’s the Same Different?
There’s an awkward middle ground that a lot of your design choices might fall into. Here, you might ultimately know your strengths and not want to move too far away from them, but you also want to figure out how you can repackage those familiar elements so that when they’re presented back to your audiences, they can see them as something new.
There are so many variables to consider here, and getting lost in minutiae of what people want to stay the same, and how much to shift to something new is all too easy. The difficulty comes from the lack of a general guide that you can follow, ultimately being something that you have to base on your own circumstances, research, and trial and error.
One of the biggest questions that you might have in this area, however, might come down to how aware to are of this debate. Do you openly accept that something you’re slightly altering will be familiar in many regards? Or do you try to pass it off as being completely new? The former might require a careful presentation to make it feel exciting enough for audiences to be interested in, to begin with, but the latter can risk coming across as insincere or underhanded if audiences think you’re trying to get one up on them.
It’s also important to be aware of the times when these changes might not be openly embraced by your audiences – such as times when food brands have changed the recipe to something that was considered a staple, leading to potential dissatisfaction with the new. In this case, it’s important to be clear about what’s changed and why, giving an example of when transparency might be in your best interest.
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