Gawker’s redesign cuts traffic in half; offers cautionary tale

When Gawker.com launched a big redesign in February 2011, its traffic halved. That can happen because even when you do good things, people don’t like change. It can take them a while to adapt to the new environment. So, assuming for a moment the Gawker redesign was a good thing, have things picked up again?

“Turns out, according to Gawker’s public statistics, things are much, much worse than was originally reported,” The Atlantic states. “Yes, the redesign cut traffic in half almost instantly, but instead of coming back, even more readers left the site behind.”

Several years ago I wrote an article about the obsession many organizations have with website redesigns. Over the years, for every successful redesign I’ve come across, there are 10 disasters. So why do organizations love redesigns? Sometimes there are genuine reasons; for example, if the old structure just isn’t working anymore. But generally redesigns are done for all the wrong reasons.