Eight-teen months seems about the right time to change it up a little. And I’d like to offer a caution to those who may want a redo after just a few months or even a year, though.

Sometimes we think that everyone else is just as tired as seeing our “same old site” as we are. And often that’s not the case. Many of our visitors have grown familiar with it. Then – what about those that just began logging on last week? How does change affect them?

I once launched a great campaign for a daily newspaper, getting attention (mostly positive). It was the “Don’t YOU want it every morning?” campaign with direct mail, radio and billboards. After three months I changed it up a little and moved on to another catch phrase after that. Then one of the executive leaders of the organization told me the campaign was great but that I didn’t leave it out there long enough for everybody to “get it.” After thinking about what he said I realized he was right.

The same principle applies in how a website brands your business or organization. Be very careful about frequent change. And make sure a good design is developed to begin with.

Of course, the last one I designed, http://www.ez2camp.com, went through 5 changes in the first week. But now, it’s here to stay … for about 18 months… just allowing a few tweaks here and there…

Change is good – but use it wisely.

Jay…good point about the clothes and changing on a more regular basis. The thinking behind the post was for a more “major” re-shuffle which you wouldn’t want to be doing on too regular a basis. (too much like hard work for you and too confusing for your audience if you keep changing chameleon like!!:-) )

However…I do agree with you about keeping it retweaked and a great way of doing that and making it “sticky” is to have you own content management system so you can go back and forth to your site and change things like latest news or your articles etc, keeping folk coming back to the site for more advice as well as “changing” the site without actually changing the design etc too much!

Good point you’ve raised there though Jay…perhaps I should have called the article…”Who wants a smelly sweat suit of a website?” (no please with that BO can you put your hands down now?!! lol!) Thanks for the comment.