When and how to redesign your product without losing users

A software product redesign should help you reach new customers and raise sales. But how can you be sure it’ll do that?

When redesigning an app people have been using for years, you risk making them so upset that they’ll leave. You could totally miss the mark, do a redesign no one asked for, or only make things pretty while they still don’t work.

If you’re considering doing a redesign, you have to be sure it’s suitable for both your business and user needs. Are users complaining? Is your churn rate high? Do you need a big codebase refresh? Is your app old and aesthetically outdated? Are just some questions you should ask yourself before getting started.

In this article, we’re going to talk about the right time to do a software product redesign, as well as how to do it so that users don’t get upset and leave.

Do you even need a redesign? How to figure it out

When you redesign a piece of software, it’s not like demolishing a house and starting from scratch. If your app works (albeit with minor user flow issues), a redesign will handle aesthetics, and maybe user flow improvements. It’s like rebuilding a house using the same floor plan or blueprint.

You can also think of it like renovations. You’re fixing faulty wires, repainting, replacing old furniture and improving decorations whilst keeping your walls, windows and layout intact.

In software, redesigns might cover your color scheme, font, page layout, navigation, and overall style & concept. All while keeping the app’s functionality and user flows (unless those need fixing as well).

Here are a few reasons why you’d need a redesign:

• Your app’s look and feel is clearly outdated. Old software will, without a doubt, go out of style eventually. Design styles keep evolving and what looked better 6-7 years ago isn’t guaranteed to still look good. For instance, 3D-like design elements were popular more than 10 years ago, but now would look obviously outdated.

• Your competition has a better UI. Some people might choose similar apps that look nicer. They appear modern and more up to date, not just visually, but to customers they might appear more up to date in terms of functionality as well.

• You want to reposition yourself among potential customers. Going from an outdated design to a stylish, modern one can help attract younger customers - if you’re trying to reach a new audience.

• It’ll give you the opportunity to improve your frontend. An outdated design isn’t just an aesthetic issue - in software, this can mean old, outdated frontend code.

The best approach is to sit down with your team and figure out what kind of benefits a redesign could get you, and thus if it’s worth pursuing it. And let’s not forget your users - if you change the look of your app too drastically and too soon, you might scare them off.

Example of a redesign we did for a client in 2024.

Before jumping into a redesign, it’s important to talk to your users and figure out what they like and don’t like about your software. This can give you ideas and can also deter you from spending thousands on an unnecessary redesign.

There are levels to the kinds of redesigns you can do. Here are some general examples:

• Full-on, redoing everything, redesigns. These are redesigns where you might stick to your branding but otherwise change your app’s entire UI. The only thing that remains is the core features.

• Branding changes. You might decide, after many years, to switch up your app or company’s branding. Maybe it’s a different color palette, fonts, iconography or all. This means going through your design and adapting it to the new branding.

• Just making it look better. You might just wish for your app to look nicer, so you’d keep your existing page structure but with different styles. This works best if the only complaint your app gets is its aesthetics.

How big of a redesign you actually need depends on the state of your app, your users, your industry, competition, and most importantly, your users & their needs.

You’d need a bigger redesign if:

• You’re losing customers to competitors who offer less features than you, but they look more modern and fresh. This might mean your aesthetics are pushing customers away, not your functionality.

• Your app was built a very long time ago. Setting aside aesthetics, older software comes with older code - and it could be lacking in security, convoluted, or creating bugs.

• Users are actively struggling with your software. In such cases, your app might need a proper UX overhaul to improve user flows and to make it more seamless to use. In this case, you’d be doing a UX redesign as opposed to a visual-based one.

• You have a bigger budget. A full redesign is more expensive than just improving your UI/UX. The less money you have, the less of a redesign you can do.

How to find out how your users would feel about a redesign

Before you even get started, you need to be sure you’re not following the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” saying. We already gave you a few reasons why you could decide to do a redesign, but if not losing users is your goal, you need to be sure they’d be okay with a redesign in the first place.

The first and best way to figure out if your redesign will cause you to lose users is by actually talking to them. Sit down with them and ask them how they feel about your app’s look and feel: this way you can figure out if you really need a redesign, and how to do it, as they might provide suggestions as well.

To find out if your users would be okay with a redesign, you can:

• Hold focus groups. Ask 5 or 6 of your users/customers to sit down with you and have a discussion about your app. Meeting in person can yield the best results, as you can also read their body language and non-verbal cues. If not possible, hold a video call with them and ask them to keep their cameras on.

• Push out surveys. Use your communication channels to post surveys asking users how they feel about your app. You can also use pop ups on your website or email random users with a discount code if they fill in the survey.

• Interview a group of users. You can also ask a few users to sit down with you individually and discuss your app’s look & feel. This can be easier but would take more time, and you’d have to centralize data a bit more manually than the previous methods.

To contact app users, you can send out emails or post on your social media channels that you need to talk to a few users about your app. You can also offer incentives like discount codes to encourage users to participate, if you’re not getting responses.

Once you’ve chosen a research method, here are a few questions you can ask users about your app’s current look and a potential redesign:

• “Is there anything you dislike about our app, in terms or look and/or feel? Why?”

• “If you could change anything about our app, what would it be and why?”

• “Do you like our app’s current aesthetic? Why or why not?”

• If they say they don’t like your app’s look, use this as a follow up question: “Are there any visual styles you like that would fit our app?”

• “How would you feel if we redesigned our app?”

• “How would you feel if we made a drastic change to our app’s UI? Could you adapt?”

• “If we were to redesign our app, would you prefer that we only change a few bits or do an entire rehaul?”

Of course, you can add more questions as you go, based on your users’ responses. Make sure you ask “why” a lot - if your users seem to have a specific opinion, knowing more could help you in the decision making process.

With these questions and research methods, you can unlock valuable insights and get an accurate idea on how people feel about your app and about a potential redesign. If everybody is satisfied, don’t go for a redesign. If they give you lots of negative feedback, try your best to use it to improve, not as an insult.

Through negative feedback, you can discover potential features you can implement to improve customer retention. You can discover bugs you weren’t aware of, or user flow inconsistencies. You can work on those before even doing a redesign, as they’re pre-existing issues.

How to redesign your software without losing users

If you’ve concluded that a redesign is what your software needs, now you’ve gotta find the right way to do it so you don’t lose users. If you’ve talked to them like we suggested, chances are you’ve already got a lot of information.

In that situation, start by centralizing all information you gathered from your users and look for common points - did several users point out the same user flow issues? Or did many users point to the same aesthetic issues? As much as you might want to just do what you want, if your goal is not losing users, you have to actually listen to their opinions.

And so, make a list of unmet user needs, dysfunctional features, aesthetic suggestions and overall feedback. Plan your redesign and brainstorm based on this list, to ensure you’re listening to your users and implementing updates they actually need.

Here are some tips on how to do a successful redesign:

• If you’re going to copy your competitor’s homework, don’t make it obvious. You’re most likely going to check out what your competition is doing, especially if you think their app looks better. And you can definitely get inspired - but don’t reheat their nachos. Be original.

• Maintain your branding. A good way for a redesign not to be a huge shock for users is to maintain your branding elements such as colors, fonts, imagery, and whatever else sets you apart. It’s a good way to keep some level of consistency. But don’t go overboard - your branding might be outdated too. 

• Use design-first development. We’ve talked about our software development method before - when we build an app, we build its entire design, approve it, and then go into code. This ensures everyone is on the same page regarding the app’s look & feel, before months of development. When using this method, you get to take a good, detailed look at your app’s new design. You can use it to brainstorm, iterate or even A/B test.

• Test it out with real users. Have a few users go through your app’s redesign and gauge feedback. Ask questions as they go through the new pages - do they like the new style? Do they dislike it, and if so, why? Make sure that whoever is guiding them isn’t an executive, so the users don’t feel intimidated or too shy to be honest.

A big part of doing a successful app redesign is not the visual part, but rather how you release it. Imagine this: you come home from work and suddenly all your furniture is reorganized, your walls painted another color and your rugs are different. You’d be taken aback, and probably unhappy, right?

Well, imagine you’re doing the exact same thing to your users. You’ve completed your app redesign and your devs push everything to the live environment. Within minutes, your app transforms, and active users find themselves in a home with repainted walls and reorganized furniture.

Would they be happy? Unless your redesign is out of this world, innovative, absolutely stunning (even so) - they probably won’t be. You’d be pushing them to re-learn your app, to redirect their muscle memory and to get used to a sudden change.

Here’s how to avoid user shock when launching your app redesign:

• Tease the new design through your communication channels. As much as you might want it to be a surprise, announcing the fact that you’re launching a redesign can be of great help. Tease parts of the new UI, maybe even new features, on your social media pages, through your newsletter or right within the app itself (as pop-up announcements, for instance). This way, users will be informed and will be able to mentally prepare for your app’s new look.

• Clearly state what you’re launching and when. Let users prepare by telling them what you redesigned, what features you’re updating, adding or removing. Give a clear timeline so they know when to expect it and not be taken aback.

• Let users switch back and forth between the new and old designs. A great way to help users get accustomed to a new design is by giving them the option to switch back, if they still need the old one. This works best if you’ve made major changes which might throw some people off.

• Listen to user feedback. If everyone says your app’s new design is bad, maybe they have a point. Consider updating and iterating until users are happy, or even switch back to your old UI if everybody is dissatisfied. You don’t want to alienate all your users.

You can’t make everybody happy, though. Not matter how hard you try, how well you do user research and how well you integrate user feedback & needs, you can’t guarantee that you won’t lose at least a few users when doing an app redesign. Your churn rate might go down anyway. But you have to give it your best try, especially if you’re really sure a redesign is what you need.

Thinking about doing an app redesign? It might sound scary, especially with all the stuff we talked about today. But it doesn’t have to be - we can chat, talk about your business & user needs, and find the right balance. So that your app redesign doesn’t push users away, but rather invites new ones to join.

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