We recently embarked on a significant “design update” of our website, www.plixo.com.sg, and will post articles on the real-world experience we are collecting on the way, hoping it to be valuable for anybody conducting such a perilous task !

Why an update ?

First to consider is actually….
Why we should not do any significant update !

1. Our website has pretty good Google rankings for most of our critical keywords in our targeted market Singapore:[more on why later]
   • 42 top ranks
   • 96 ranks 2-5
   • 25 ranks 6-10

   This include not only long-tail low-search keywords (ex:”laser cut leather singapore”, top rank) but also some describing our main activity (ex:”large format printing”, top rank) and some wide and competitive (ex:poster printing, rank 2).

2. We got an average of above 200 visitors per day, most of them qualified that translate to around 50 requests by email and 20 phone calls, being our main business source of new customers, both B2B and B2C, and just nice to fill our production.
3. Our customers regularly praise our website, easy to use even on mobile and comparing favorably against our competitors

So Why ?
Here is our reasoning:

1. We never totally polished our current web site, with many small details here and there [pixels alignment, differences in rendering in various browsers, some pages with gallery some with slide-shows] not satisfying our perfectionist eyes. Trying to fix these with our current HTML+CSS has proven difficult, so a rewrite is expected to allow this
2. While our website has some basic Responsive features and display nicely on smartphones and tablets, it’s not optimized for Retina type aka high DPI displays, with our logo and “icons” being blurs etc.
3. Our website load very fast, but still use a lot of bandwidth and HTTP requests for the “enhanced” features “Gallery” and “Map”, making it not totally mobile friendly
4. We have additional websites on the way for dedicated products/brands (BenMark, Sign4Sure). Updating our current website will provide us a real-case and a base for these two websites.

Each of this point is not enough to take the risk and bear the cost of a redesign. But all together their offer a more compelling story.
And oups, I forgot one key reason: I’m in charge of our web and wanna enjoy some of the new technologies and hopefully share and get praised for it

Next episode: part 2 – Target and Criteria

Featured image © Violetkaipa | Dreamstime.com – Technology In The Hands Photo