Site redesign and search rankings

[sprke]

Hello, I have recently bought a ecommerce website based on volusion and have decided its time for a face lift. I currently rank very well for a couple keywords and my fear is if I do a redesign will it might hurt my current rankings? I want to change the logo, the colors, background, add some scrolling flash banners and maybe move the location of the catagory "buttons".

I have done some research and some say it won't hurt and some say maybe. The person that wants to do the "facelift" says it won't make any difference but I'd like some professional unbiased opinions. Thanks

[grynge]

These thoughts are all pre panda/penguin updates (I have no testing done after those updates)

If you are changing navigation yes it will hurt unless you make it better for example changing from a js menu to a css menu will help navigation, also moving navigation (in your case category buttons down) lower in the code will also hurt if you place it higher in the code it will help.

Saying that moving from a table design to a css template did (pre panda/penguin) help in raising your ranking. Especially if navigation and content was placed high up in the code. Cleaning up code to be w3 compliant was a hit and miss with my trials some sites improved other sites did nothing but it did not hurt in anyway.

Changing an image and removing or modifying flash will not hurt (unless that image was bringing in traffic from image search) Changing pagenames should not be a high priority unless you (or your coder) knows what they are doing with redirection.

Apparently removing excess code and speeding up a site these days could help (but I have no proof of that statement)

[sprke]

Thanks for the thoughts and the quick reply. So basically if the web developer knows what he's doing it will stay the same or get better...

[BentAnat]

Having also had some pre-Panda experience, I can tell you that it really boils down to what exactly you're planning on changing.
Especially the Navigation can have a notable impact.

Speeding up a site is good in Google's books, so that's a definite benefit IMHO.
Coulours won't affect anything at all, though take note that there ARE theories that google picks up on white-on white, for example, since it was used by some Black-hats for keyword stuffing. So Avoid that.
Images should be fine as well, but make sure the image names (as in the file names) and the ALT tags are right.

With mroe detail, we could think about more factors, but as it stands, it's a bit vague to tell you anything definite beyond that.

[akirk]

you need to make your decision based on wider factors...

search ranking is obviously useful in sending people to you, however it is only one part of the equation...
e.g. 100 visitors a day of whom 10 convert and buy v.
40 visitors a day of whom 15 convert and buy...
in such a scenario a drop in visitors is not important...

ultimately your site should be built to convert people - not to manage the search engines...
only once you are as effective as possible at converting should you worry about nos coming to you (1000s a day and 0% conversion would be useless!)
you can work hard on visitors to build on a converting site - but to sacrifice conversions for visitors may not be sensible...

(counter point - 100 visitors a day with 10% conversion v 1000 a day with 5% conversion - go for visitors )

the point I am making though is you need to balance the two - don't get caught in the trap of assuming it is all about visitors - it is only one factor in running a business... If you take the analogy offline most businesses would happily ditch all non-productive visitors - in fact many do consciously do just that by setting up their offer to put off those they don't want... they do this because visitors who do not convert / convert ineffectively can cost the business a lot of money... we tend to assume that this is less important online - but non-converting visitors still take up your resources / slow down the website...

so think it through carefully

Alasdair