Moving in from SketchCo…

You’ve probably seen those sites whose whole reason for being is simply to critique — and more often than not, ridicule — other sites they feel are poorly designed. Usually unsolicited. The notion is that the rest of us can learn what’s good by seeing what’s “bad.” That does make sense, except I don’t think they deliver enough information to make the “design” lessons truly educational.

You see, I’m not too inclined to critique anyone’s site design unless “no” or thereabouts is the answer I receive to this question:

Does the site achieve its publisher’s goals?

Does it, in other words, do and deliver what it’s supposed to do and deliver? I rarely see the critiques ask that question, let alone answer it. A couple of observations that may help you think about this more:

• Many of the sites that are critiqued have a higher-than-normal Google PR (translation: They’re getting traffic). Which probably explains how the design nitpicking sites got wind of them in the first place.

• Even after being blasted and even made fun of, many of the sites still don’t change a thing. Not all of them, but enough to make you go hmm.

My take on why that is so: Their publishers are intelligent enough to realize, “Hey, this thing’s working for me; I better not touch a damn thing.”

Could a redesign improve the results the publishers are looking for? Of course. But it could also muck up what’s been working so far. So, smart money is on the design strategy of leaving well enough alone, or, if changes are forthcoming, to approach them slowly and carefully.

I’d probably even do some split-testing before doing any whole site design changes — you can have half of your incoming traffic routed to the “new”design, and the other half to the existing business-as-usual design. Then start tracking, counting and analyzing over time — see if the redesign really does make your results better… or worse. The numbers should make your next course of action a no-brainer.

Eldon Sarte is the publisher of Wordpreneur and Braintropolis and the author of Wordpreneur Reloaded, GolfIncome: eBay and more, available on Amazon and its Kindle. For more information about Eldon, click here.

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