4 builders who never spoke to each other · contested
Rebuild the site, or realign it
One position is that a generic site is worth scrapping even while it converts, because a look nobody else has is itself an asset, and that replacing a bare homepage with a polished one carrying real voices produced one of the largest lifts on record. The other is that a rebuild spends its entire budget getting back to where it started, and a few hours of tweaks would have done it.
Where this splits
Chen and Jarvis both rebuilt and gained, while Barry argues for polishing what exists because a redesign consumes its budget returning to parity.
3 claims against 1
Glen Allsopp · Olivia Chen · Paul Jarvis
Rebuild the site outright, even where it converts
- 01Replace a bare-bones homepage with a polished one that carries the voices of the people you serve.
- 02Rebuild a marketing site that already converts if it looks like every other SaaS, and give it a visual identity nobody else has.
Polish what exists, a rebuild only regains parity
Polish what you already have instead of rebuilding it, because a rebuild spends its whole budget getting back to where you started.
- 03A design overhaul that divides opinion can still buy loyalty, so judge it on repeat visits rather than on taste.
What it returned
- 35%
The new design plus embedded form made a visitor 35% likelier to give. The donate rate moved from 1.98% of visitors up to 2.67%, against a nonprofit sector norm nearer 1%, and it was GiveDirectly's second largest lift ever, worth around $700,000 a year.
- 62
Adweek's Mark Stenberg reported that Vox Media's redesign of The Verge raised loyal readers, counted as people visiting at least five times a month, by 62 percent.
The old site was converting but felt generic, so he scrapped several designs; the site shipped as V2 was internally closer to a fourth or fifth attempt, and it carries oddities like cats in scarves.
James Clear's blog went from adequate to genuinely good in two or three hours of live tweaks, new title font, changed navigation colour, where a hired redesign would likely have stalled at good enough; credits Cameron Moll's line about realigning rather than redesigning
Sources
- How 16 Companies are Dominating the World's Google Search Results (2024 Edition) - Detailed.comGlen Allsopp · detailed.com · They’re Responsible for Some of the Boldest, Original Website Designs Online · 2023-03-07
- Don’t start from scratchNathan Barry · nathanbarry.com · The peril of starting from scratch · 2015-03-25 · dissenting
- From almost shutting down to tripling our MRR - Fathom AnalyticsPaul Jarvis · usefathom.com · From almost shutting down to tripling our MRR · 2019-11-04
- How GiveDirectly increased donations by over $3 million/year through experimentationOlivia Chen · lennysnewsletter.com · Homepage design and interactivity matter · 2024-12-03
the second source
Three plays a week, for the phase you are in
No roundup of links, no news. Three tactics more than one builder arrived at separately, with the numbers each one returned and the disagreements left in.
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