You made this awesome site back in 2006, everything is up to code. You got some rockin’ portfolio pieces and your feeling pretty good about the situation. So when should a designer redesign their website?
In my opinion, every 2-3 years minimum.
What?? But what about brand loyalty and people being scared that they are not on the old site they were so familiar with.
A site that was designed 2-3 years ago, looks it. This is pretty much your business card so make it stand out.
Look I’m not saying scrap the whole thing and start over – unless it sucked in the first place – You should keep your logo consistent but I feel that the rest is up for grabs. And hey, if your CSS is good it should take that long.
When your a designer your website says a lot about you before the potential client even gets to your portfolio or about page. You’ll notice on my site I have a few pieces of my work on the homepage, I want the user to be hit with visual pieces off the bat, it’s intentional, so that they want to look for more.
This may not be true for other types of business – ebay and amazon probably don’t want a face lift anytime soon since they rely on people feeling comfortable enough to actual purchase something from them online – but in the design field you gotta go for the gusto!