In the web design community there are many people that preach various things. Some people tell you to keep innovating on your website to make the right changes, and others tell you to stick to bets practice. However what you’re most concerned with, is knowing which route to take.
Web design can be a long process and even the smallest of changes can bring drastic results. This article will describe how innovation and best practice have their own advantages in their own ways.
Innovation
One of the first benefits of innovation is the fact that you have a real chance to make a big change. Innovation is making something new and if you manage to pull it off correctly it can have massively large payoffs. Besides just bringing in new business it will have people with other websites want to start linking to you, mainly due to your creativity.
When you start getting the links in from your innovation then you will see new streams of traffic and higher search engine rankings. As well as this once you’ve managed to innovate successfully, this can then be the base for other tests. You can then innovate on your innovation and find things that your audience like even more. This means that you’ll be ahead of your competitors while they are playing catch up.
However one major disadvantage of innovation in web design is the fact that it can take a lot of time to get right. Since no one has been bold enough to try it before then you won’t know how people will react to it. Once you’ve tested it and got people to use it then you’ll have a better idea of whether it’s a success or a failure.
Best Practice
A benefit of best practice over innovation is mainly the fact that it has been trialled and tested. This means that you will already have a pretty good idea of whether it works or not. Besides this, if it’s something that has already been rolled out in your niche then you will be sitting even more confidently.
Another benefit of best practice in web design is that it can be rolled out quickly. Due to the fact it’s been done before there will be coders out there and possibly even free resources on how to do it yourself. This means that you can do it fast and you will get small but consistent long term results as you know it works.
On the other hand one thing about best practice is that many webmasters just assume it works. In web design testing often means the make or break of the situation. You should always test something that has been said as best practice as something to develop to suit your audience. Only the fundamentals in web design are set in stone.
As you can see there are various benefits and disadvantages to each strategy. The below should sum up the article pretty nicely.
To Conclude:
Innovation
- Chance To make drastic change
- Could turn into a linkable asset
- Could be used to base other tests
- Takes a lot of time to get right
Best Practice
- Has already been trialled and tested
- Can be rolled out quickly
- Can provide small but long term results
- Doesn’t always work
