Depending on your budget for building a site, an extremely worthwhile venture is to create an alternate layout, or parallel design. The benefits are almost endless, and features on the site quickly expose the good and the bad.

Parallel Design in Action

I recently wrote a post about a Dallas Real Estate website in how it made good use of its home page. Well the same company has another site, San Antonio Real Estate, that is parallel in design, but has clearly made different choices in regards to some of its layout. Most of the same features are there, but they have either selected to remove them or are testing the other with the design. Typically, creating a parallel design would be done before a site goes public, but obviously you could get a great deal more feedback doing it live.

The Benefits

Creating a, or a few alternate site designs can produce some fantastic benefits. When analyzing each layout, and then comparing to another, the good and the bad are quickly recognized. You then have the ability to include those good ideas from say, Site A, and then incorporate them into Site B. Very quickly you now have not one improved design, but two improved designs. After a few rounds of this, the designs should almost merge with only the best ideas shining through. Keep in mind that this isn’t just limited to the simple layout of the site, but all aspects of the site. Things like how a form is handled, or how search results are displayed, everything.

The main advantage of this is the overwhelming time it could save you. Using just one design, time and slow little tests are the only way to improve your site performance. Testing parallel designs will quickly kick out the junk, and bubble sort the best to the top giving you the best web design. It’s usability testing at an almost primal level, and it’s a great way to start your site.

No Budget

If you don’t have a budget to build a multiple designs, or you build your sites yourself it’s not the end of the world. This is where that time you spent doing your market analysis kicks in. When investigating your competitors, don’t just look at their sites, use them. Try their order forms, sign up for the mailing lists, and  take notes on how they run their websites. Follow the money, and follow what ideas you like best. This is what your target market is most likely used to, assuming they have used one of your competitors sites already.