We’ve all been there. Clicking around a website, hoping something will make sense, only to mutter those dreaded words: “I can’t find anything.” According to Cro Metrics EVP of Product, Dave Albert, that’s the death knell of any digital experience. And unfortunately, it’s more common than you’d think.
In this lively and honest interview, Hannah Dudeck, Marketing Specialist at Cro Metrics, sits down with Dave to talk all things web redesign, AI-powered experimentation, and what separates a pretty site from a high-performing one. Whether you’ve inherited a mess of a website or you’re staring down a redesign tunnel with stakeholder pressure mounting, Dave shares the real insights you won’t hear in a pitch deck.
Keep reading, or watch the video, to learn all about it.
Let’s Hand It Over to Dave.
Can you give us the TL;DR on what design & build services are in your words?
Yeah, I mean, design & build, it’s really like a loose term that encompasses anything where we’re creating net new or a dynamically different customer experience. So that could be redesigning an entire website as part of a brand refresh, adding new functionality to a website, re-platforming to an improved content management system or e-commerce platform, or leveraging AI to help customers discover products and services that best fit their needs.
What’s your hottest take on Web Design in 2025?
Well, obviously AI is all the rage, right? And in my opinion, AI is going to be a huge unlock to pursue experimenting with the optimal customer experience faster. AI enables us to analyze data faster, predict outcomes, and build and launch things faster. That’s just going to continue to open up more and more possibilities to improve velocity and empower marketing and product teams to experiment more.
Let’s say you’ve just inherited a broken website and you can only fix three things. What do you fix first?
Yeah, I mean, it really depends on what’s broken. If something is preventing a customer from making a purchase or completing a transaction, obviously that’s paramount to address.
But beyond the obvious things, I think I’d really focus on knowing who your customers are, what they expect, and just delivering that frictionless experience to them.
For example, if they’re an existing customer looking for support, make that super easy because they’ll stay a loyal customer. If it’s easy to find what they’re looking for, then they’re not frustrated by a lack of support. If they’re a new customer, make sure you’re matching their intent with what you have to offer.
At the end of the day, it’s really simple. Just, like, don’t make people think. And with AI, that becomes more important because people expect quick, easy answers and they’re just going to bounce if they can’t get them.
When does a website need a full redesign versus a series of strategic updates?
So I think a lot of things can be the driver behind a full redesign. Let’s say, for example, a company has a new brand they’re trying to unveil, or they’re doing a brand refresh, or they really want to elevate the customer’s brand perception. Sometimes those sorts of big sweeping changes might really warrant a full redesign of a site versus strategic updates.
It also could be, you know, kind of politically driven within the organization, right? You might have senior stakeholders who are saying, like, “we really need a brand new website experience.”
So we often kind of see these big sort of pivotable drivers behind why a client would want to redesign versus strategic updates.
I think, also, when you’re really thinking about dramatically changing the customer experience or you’re introducing a new way to sell your products or services. Oftentimes those are really the catalysts rethinking the entire website versus optimizing what’s already there.
When does competition kind of play into that?
Yeah, I think that’s a really great call out. When a competitor has created some sort of unfair advantage, right?
Maybe they’ve found some advantage within the marketplace where they’ve unearthed a new sort of revolutionary way to conduct business and, all of a sudden, they’re taking over a lot of market share.
There could be reasons to redesign to really confront those types of things or they’ve potentially positioned themselves to be superior in some way.
Like, I’ll give you an example. We have a client who has a combination of a software platform and services, right? And they really have led with the service aspect, but their competition is really more leading with the software aspect. It’s being able to evaluate that and say “okay, are they taking away market share because people, the customers, really prefer the software aspect over the services aspect? And should we lead with our technology aspect first and let our customers know that they’re supported by services?”
It’s really thinking about how your competitors are positioning themselves in the marketplace, and then how you’re ultimately reacting to that. And if that really constitutes this idea of “hey, we need to dramatically change things in order to stay with the competition or elevate ourselves above the competition.”
What business problems does a redesign solve when it’s done right?
Yeah, I think first and foremost, it can really elevate a brand perception, right? And cascading from that, it can drive customer loyalty. It can boost conversion. So things like your ad spend become way more effective.
I mean, you can spend all the money in the world on ads, but if you’re driving to a website that doesn’t convert: that’s a horrible use of bargaining dollars.
Lastly, I think it can enhance the lives of your team, right? We’re always thinking externally, but sometimes internal is really important, too. If you are building your site in a way where it’s easy to manage content and update, you’re empowering your team to be able to do more and just have a better working experience.
Describe a bad website redesign in three words. Go.
“Can’t. Find. Anything.”
It really all comes back to usability, right? You have to get the fundamental usability of your website down. As you do that, and we often see it through experimentation, it really arrives at that optimal customer experience that then unlocks the bigger opportunities. And bigger opportunities are things like personalization and tailoring the experience to different audiences, really the more advanced things.
It’s interesting because we do see often where people want to jump right to the advanced things. It’s like “hey there are some fundamental things on the site that we really want to make better for the customer before we get into experimenting with those more advanced things, because you’re going to get a lot more impact from solving those usability things first.”
For someone who’s maybe even burned by a redesign before, what’s different about the way that Cro Metrics does it?
The main thing that we lead with that is different is: we’re taking an experiment-led approach. And what that means is, we’re going to test to mitigate
the risk that unproven changes are going to lead to a lower performing website.
Beyond that, I think it’s table stakes to be simply a good partner to work with, right? That means good communication, following up on what you say you’re going to do, and being a strategic thought partner to the client who can bring the right knowledge and industry perspective to the equation.
What is one feature you see on enterprise websites that feels fancy, but usually confuses users or maybe it leads to less conversions?
I think a lot of times when they become more corporate landing pages that make it difficult for people to find what they’re looking for. And people have very low tolerance for that, especially nowadays when they can just bail and ask ChatGPT for an answer. Solving that, and really making it so that it’s easy for the person to come to the site and it matches their intent. You know, if they’re looking for customer service, if they’re looking to buy a product or service, if they’re looking to do research, making sure they can easily go in the right direction
What’s one part of the process that clients are always surprised or delighted by
I think we simply have really strong project managers that keep everyone on task and informed.
I mean, it sounds really simple and obvious, but like so many agencies talk a good game when it comes to that, and then simply let things fall through the cracks and don’t follow through, right? You can have these awesome experts, you can have a track record of creating these amazing websites, or doing really innovative growth marketing. But at the end of the day good project management and having a strong project manager is the backbone of any project.
And the best ones know exactly when to pull in the various specialists, and the subject matter experts, so that everyone on the team can shine and we can really get to the best outcome.
Can you tell us about one of your favorite redesign projects and what made it so successful?
Yeah, so we recently helped HackerOne redesign their website, and it was an amazing collaboration. I mean, we had a super tight deadline that was event-driven, but our stakeholders on the client’s side, they were just wonderful to work with.
And everyone rallied together around a shared vision of what they wanted to accomplish and be proud of. It was just a great outcome and the results have been great. I mean, the site has driven really strong performance for them.
We’ve made it really, really easy to manage. So, you know, not only was it a satisfying process to work with them, they were just a great client to work with, and we had just such a cohesive team through that process. But we were all really proud of what we launched and super happy to see how it was performing over the old website. So just a great experience.
What CMS platforms do we typically work with and how flexible are we?
Yeah, I would say we’re pretty agnostic. We can obviously work with you know, very tried and true common platforms like WordPress and Drupal, but we also work with a lot of headless solutions. So things like Contentful, Sanity, Strapi. And we find that the headless solutions all share similarities, and it’s fairly easy to adapt. to the various platforms.
How do we ensure performance, accessibility, and scalability don’t get lost in the design conversation?
Yeah, I think it’s paramount that they are simply part of the plan. Like you absolutely have to build them in the schedule as a non-negotiable item and then have clear mutual expectations set around those three attributes, right?
I think it’s also important too, as you’re looking to build things that are performant, accessible, scalable – that you’re also setting aside quality assurance time. You’re vetting all of the work that you’re doing across those three areas to really make sure that ultimately what you’re launching follows those three things and launches according to your plan.
Accessibility is just so important because it’s just very easy to overlook how different people navigate websites. It extends beyond, you know, just simply people with disabilities. It’s people that have different device types, different monitors, different setups. You have all of these different variations of things that can impact how accessible your website is. And so, you’d rather be thinking more broadly as to how you can accommodate all of those things and really thinking about your entire audience. It’s just something that’s very easy to overlook, so we always try to make sure that we’re incorporating that as part of the process.
In fast-moving industries like, let’s say, travel or telehealth, for instance, how do you design for change and scalability?
Yeah, I think it’s important to really do your homework. on consumer preferences, the competitive landscape, and just being an industry subject matter expert. When you’re thinking about a fast moving industry like travel or telehealth, those types of things are really important because consumer preferences can change really quickly. The competitive landscape can really make an impact because, obviously, those are highly competitive industries.
They’re also subject to technological advances, right? Especially in telehealth. So it’s just really making sure that you’re staying on the pulse of those types of things, so that ultimately, you’re going back and relying on sort of tried and true methods and best practices. But at the same time, adapting to what the consumer wants now.
Looking to Redesign With Confidence? Let’s Talk.
A website redesign shouldn’t feel like a gamble. At Cro Metrics, we combine data, strategy, and sharp execution to build websites that do what they’re supposed to: Convert, scale, and support.
We’ve seen what works (and what definitely doesn’t), and we’re here to help you skip the guesswork and get it right the first time.