Redesigning your own website

I'm currently redesigning 2 of my websites - one I've been doing for the last 6 months and one for more like 2 years. So why's it taking forever?

Part of the problem is wanting it to be perfect - it might be easier to get finished if I tackled it a bit at a time. Launch the new design without say the content changes, and sort out the newsletter later... you get the idea.

Another problem is that there's no one hassling me to get the job finished, and no one paying me to do it either. At the end of the day redoing my own site may land me more business, but it's hard to compete with the real paying jobs.

Does anyone else have the same problems? Is it worth it anyway? Do you reckon you should redesign every year, after 2-3 years, or never?

Cat

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http://web.soothed.com.au/
Web design for natural therapists

Hi Cat,

I hate redesigning my own sites. Without the spectre of commercial realism I get bogged down in detail, and have only my own judgement to go on. With a client you can offload actual decisions onto them, and if you're used to having clients, making your own decisions gets much harder.

That said, I do think sites should get a pretty heavy makeover once every 2-3 years, with incremental design/information architecture changes in between. That's my advice to clients, so I should follow it myself, right?

Simon

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ELATED : )
http://www.PageKits.com
Professional Website Templates

Last year I was tasked with redesigning our company website, and I loved every minute of it. I had free rein to design the site how I liked, without ridiculous client requests hanging over me. What's more, since there was no strict deadline I could take my time and get it looking just right. The pressure was off.

The end result was miles better than anything that had gone before, and I got a real sense of satisfaction from it.

Sadly I only get to do this every couple of years (which I think is a good amount of time between redesigns)!

Hi Simon & Zaphod,

Thanks for replying Interesting to see different opinions.

I'd probably agree, you do need to redesign from scratch every now again, otherwise all those incremental changes can start to get a bit messy, and the design can start to look a bit jaded.

I guess I'd better get my act together and get the job finished eh

Cat

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http://web.soothed.com.au/
Web design for natural therapists