At the end of each calendar year I often schedule a quick review of my clients websites with the owner or person in charge of the website. These days website design involves much more than graphics or the layout of a web page. We look at the visitor stats, any changes in revenue or traffic, and make up a schedule for any changes we find necessary. Sometimes there's new products or maybe updates to existing information.

So one of my long time clients responds to my email and says he wants to do it early since they will be shutting down for the last two weeks of December. We scheduled the meeting and got the key players together and came up with a very brief agenda. This particular owner, Bill, often sits in but lets his operations and marketing people make most of the decisions.

Let me give you a quick background so you'll appreciate the meeting notes more. We've been doing business with this client for about 15 years. Besides doing their website design work we also provide all their IT Support and networking services. The company has been in business for about 35 years and done well in their industry for many years. This year has been tough due to all the financial mess but they have managed to cut some costs and even find a few new clients.

OK, back to the meeting. I get there about 15 minutes early and go up to the conference room to setup my laptop so we can view the website as we discuss any changes. A couple of people stick their head in the door and say hello, I know most of the office staff pretty well. The Operations Manger comes in and after some small talk says, you're going to love this meeting. I look up from what I'm doing and say, why? He says he'll let the owner Bill tell me all about it.

So the other 4 managers wander in at the appointed time. One mentions Bill, is on the phone and he'll be here in a few minutes. So everyone sits tight and I pass out the website statistics for the last 12 months. We've got some good software installed to track a lot of information, plus they have an internal tracking system too. Part of our basic website design services also involve the marketing aspect of any website.

The owner, Bill comes in and asks if we started and I say no, just handed out the numbers for the past year. He says before we start on the agenda, I'd like to say a few words. I say fine, go ahead. Bill says that he's already reviewed the numbers and given the current economy and the general slowdown it looks better than he would have forecast. But then he drops the bombshell that he thinks the website looks a little old and thinks we should do a total revamp in content and look and feel.

I was totally caught off guard; never guessing something like this would come up at this meeting. Everyone at the table turned and looked at me for my reaction. I said OK, what is it that you think needs changing? Bill said "well, I'm just tired of looking at the same old website and I think it needs some new information and maybe some additional punch."

Now don't get me wrong, I would love to have the extra billable hours something like this would provide for the website design part of my business. Their website has a lot of content and it would be a major project. It would really help out my December billing and provide a great boost to my numbers for the end of the year under our website design revenue.

But the bad news is that it would most likely cause them to loose keyword rankings, lots of targeted traffic, and even worse, lose revenue. I've been through this type of situation where a website was doing well and producing revenue and quickly tanked on a major redesign. Major revisions on a producing website can create a big time loss of traffic and indexing, I've seen it happen too many times.

So, I told Bill about a client who decided to do the same type of re-design even though I recommended against it. And I gave some very impressive numbers on just how bad the website lost traffic and in turn the company lost revenue. He looked up into the air for a moment, you could see the wheels turning, and said OK all the rest of the staff voiced similar opinions so lets forget the re-design for now.

Everyone at the table breathed a sigh of relief, most of all me. The rest of the meeting went well and we did decide to add some new content and make some other small changes. All in all, it was a good meeting and we made some progress.

The bottom line is that when your website is firing on all cylinders, don't go in and start making changes just because you may be tired of the same design. It's a good thing to make some improvements based on tracking and testing different aspects of your website. But if you make major revisions for no business or marketing reasons, it usually works to your disadvantage. Always try and do small changes and test them to determine if they offer any improvement.

And if you don't have a good method to analyze your important website statistics, you need to address that quickly. This will give you the information to make those important small changes and test each and every one to insure you get the results that were expected. Small changes that prove their worth by testing is always the best approach and should be incorporated into any website design project.