What can a small Charlotte web design company learn from some of the world’s most heavily-trafficked sites? There probably isn’t a lot of overlap in the actual design of a local ecommerce site and, say, YouTube. But there are general lessons that tech giants can communicate through their approach to overall maintenance and user engagement. These are services that any Charlotte web design company ought to be able to provide, just like the bigwigs.

Recently, YouTube unveiled a series of changes to its homepage. Desktop and tablet users are now starting to notice changes in the way recommendations and channel subscriptions are displayed. Thumbnails and titles are now larger, and there are fewer per row. Channel information is displayed more prominently, and there is now an option to save videos to a temporary queue, so they can be watched in sequence.

Users of the mobile site and the YouTube app will not notice any difference from what they’re used to, for now. But of course, that might change at any time, because as the changes on other platforms remind us, there’s no real endpoint for web development. That fact is actually upsetting to many people, and you can already find links online explaining how to revert to the previous version of the YouTube site. Unfortunately for traditionalists, these tricks generally don’t last for long.

Ideally, upgrades are made for a good reason. And when they do, they should stick around until the next upgrade becomes necessary. This is a principle that should be as well-recognized by the staff of a Charlotte web design company as the developers at almighty Google. But if either group has an interest in customer service, then adhering to that principle cannot mean simply ignoring the inevitable backlash.

Managing the public’s response to change is arguably more important for the small, Charlotte web design company. After all, it’s not like people are going to suddenly stop using YouTube because it looks subtly different. But users of much smaller websites might go days, weeks, or months between visits. In that case, people are more likely to find a redesign jarring, and some may even respond by clicking away and not returning.

This isn’t to say that your Charlotte web design company shouldn’t implement progressive upgrades to client websites. It absolutely should. But the danger of backlash just underscores the fact that it is vitally important for these alterations to be based on changes in the way people use similar sites, or the internet as a whole.

If the designers have done their job correctly, some people will still rebel against a new look for an old site. But their aggravation will quickly die down when they navigate through the homepage and beyond. Effective web development reveals touches of convenience that users didn’t realize they were missing. It proves to the most hardcore traditionalists that their way of using the internet cannot last forever. There’s always room for improvement. And no website, however large or small, should stop looking for ways to make things better.