Going into the new year, many companies, individuals and startups will be asking, “Do we need a redesign for 2015?” This is all part of the annual planning process that everyone goes through. They will ask this question each year so they can put together budgets, RFPs and the dreaded search to find the right designer or agency to help.

I would argue that the answer you think you have this year is probably the wrong one. You may not need a full redesign. In many cases, a review of existing features and usability will be enough. Far too often when beginning a project like this, an agency or designer will want to start from scratch and throw everything previously done away. They don’t consider that some of these elements and user flows were already working. I’ve even seen situations where the agency wanted to throw the entire company brand out the window and start a new. I disagree with these approaches. I believe that you can make significant improvements to performance just by reevaluating some of the user focused interactions amongst the interface. For example, maybe your business goal is to double your mailing list over the next three months so that you have more leads to target your messages to, but then you only have a mailing list sign up form on your contact page. If this is the only business objective that isn’t getting met, a user-centric designer will, and should, be able to offer a solution without a full site redesign.

I believe that there are many apps and sites out there that were built by designers claiming to have web skills but are offering subpar solutions. They may be good at HTML, CSS, javascript and more, but they aren’t answering your companies real design problems. Instead, these designers are more focused on using the latest technologies and trends. They would rather give you something that WOWS and unusable by your audience than truly understand your goals and the objectives of your users. This will leave you back at square one with your project or worse you could be doing hurting your brand now. These designers have usually won a project because of someone knew them as a family friend, they’ve won a tons of “design” awards or can do the job for the lowest cost. None of these reasons are good answers to why your company should work with that particular designer.

I implore you, reader, to question the credentials of these designers the next time you look to them to solve your problems. Ask them how their previous solutions actually solved their clients problems. Did the product perform better? Convert more viewers into customers? Increase mailing list signups? Or any other potential business goals that you can think of. Also try out their solutions. See how the solution functions for the user. Is it easy to navigate? Can you accomplish the desired tasks you are trying to achieve? Does the solution connect with you emotionally?

With it being 2015, there are a few things that should come standard in a digital products these days. One is responsive design meaning your site is accessible and usable across various devices and screen sizes and the second is user focused. If you are not putting the needs of your users first then you’ve already failed. Any true web designer will take the time to do workshops, run user tests, create user personas, wireframes/prototypes and more long before they start giving you pretty mockups.

There should be a clear and steady foundation to a project long before “design” happens. By cutting the strategy portion of a project out, reducing down the budget or speeding up the timeline, you potentially hurt the results and success of the final outcome. Understanding and maintaining the need for the user-focused process doesn’t have to force your budgets to increase or timelines to be extended out there are plenty of ways to gather user information in a very guerrilla style. However those methods won’t be covered in this post. (Stay tuned on for information on some of the methods I use at a later date.)

I ask you again to rethink your design problems in 2015. Find a designer that will work with you on the right solution to the right problem. Sometimes this will mean you will need a full redesign especially if your site was built several years ago, but sometimes all it will need is a simple review and few tweaks in order for it to perform at its best.

Good luck and can’t wait to hear about your upcoming design projects and solutions in 2015.