[Sigia-l] [Iai-Members] IA Mythbusters - impact of redesign in traffic

[Ziya Oz]

Dmitry Nekrasovski:

> I remember seeing a similar conclusion in this Forrester report
> (which, unfortunately, I no longer have access to):
> 
> http://www.forrester.com/Research/Document/Excerpt/0,7211,38692,00.html
> 
> They did have data to back it up from a number of Fortune 500 site
> redesigns. Whether that data sample is representative of all site
> redesigns is, of course, another question.


This is what the Executive Summary says:

Although Internet leaders like Dell, Fidelity, and Staples routinely measure
the business results of Web redesigns, some companies don't even buy into
the concept that design projects affect the bottom line. Other firms do know
that design can increase sales and reduce costs but struggle to put a dollar
value on these improvements. That's unfortunate, because members of our
Customer Experience Peer Research Panel say that the overwhelming majority
of their site design projects in 2005 were successful at achieving their
business goals. By constructing simplified straw man models of the ROI
produced by Web site design projects, we show that even with conservative
assumptions, the logical conclusion for most companies is to just do it.

-------

"design projects affect the bottom line" is quite different from "whenever
sites go through redesign there is a dip in traffic" which was Livia's
original quote in question.

You can, for example, change traffic without any major redesign effort, not
every traffic change (up or down) would necessarily have a substantial
impact on revenue, etc. A constant misunderstanding in most design ROI
'studies' is the inability to grok the notion that you can't decouple
execution from intention: if you screw up, you screw up. Without the
willingness and the ability to judge the execution of specific intention(s),
one CANNOT postulate results on (re)design ROI. It's really Design 101 stuff
most such 'studies' miss.

-- 
Ziya

It depends.
If it didn't, you'd be out of a job.