If your website has been around for any length of time, you’ve probably gone through a redesign or at least a round of significant updates. Hopefully, each time has been a great success and you’ve never looked back. But for the rest of us there’s likely been at least one time when we thought...OMG, what have we done?

It might have been obvious right from the start. The moment the new site was launched it became crystal clear that not every change was for the better. Or, it might have taken a while for the reality to set in….maybe customer feedback wasn’t as positive as you’d hoped, or maybe the proof was in the analytics and your site’s performance started to tank.

Whatever the case, if you find yourself in that situation, you know you have to do something. But what? Ideally, whoever you partnered with on your redesign will work with you to help you feel comfortable with the state of your website. Maybe you can work together to come up with a solution.

But what if they can’t or won’t? Believe it or not, it is possible to salvage a redesign gone wrong if you have the right web development partner.

First step is to identify the problem. Is it just the look and feel of the site that isn’t working? Did it look good in development but now in the real world it’s just not a good fit for your company? If so, some simple graphic changes might do the trick. A color change here, a font change there, an additional image there, you might be surprised what these types of updates can do. Or, maybe the look is fine but somehow it wasn't built in a responsive format. Believe it or not, many sites can be retro-fitted as mobile-friendly while still retaining the integrity of the branding.

Maybe it’s not the look and feel, though. Maybe it’s the overall flow of the site that your customers are finding cumbersome. Did you move things around in a way your customers don’t appreciate? Has it become too difficult to navigate your site? Again, you might be able to fix things with just a few changes. Renaming navigation, combining unnecessary clicks, even just changing the position of a link might make all the difference. You just need to think about how your customers use the site and go from there. A web development partner can help you make sure your site’s usability meets your customers’ needs.

But maybe it’s not the front-end of the site at all. Maybe your customers love it but the content management system is not as easy and straightforward as promised. If you can’t maintain your site and make updates easily, you’ll just end up frustrated with a site that slowly becomes stagnant. Hopefully, your site is built on a platform that is conducive to back-end updates and additions and allows a good web developer the opportunity to give you what you need.

Whatever the reason for the dissatisfaction, if there’s a way to fix it without starting over, a good web development team will help you do that. So find one. In the end, you might decide that it doesn’t make sense to try to fix it because it’s just too broken. Does this mean you have to start from scratch? Yes and no.

Every website is different and functionality can range from the most basic to the most complex. If it makes sense, you can take advantage of a design template that can be modified to your branding. Leverage a development platform providing functionality that is customizable but not custom, and including a content management system that can be as robust or simplistic as you need. Yes, this means another redesign project, but not necessarily the same redesign budget.

So if your redesign did not go as planned, don’t throw in the towel but do take action. The sooner you admit defeat, find a web development partner, and get on the road to recovery, the sooner you’ll find you and your site on victory lane.