A website redesign can be a tricky thing. The main goal should be to make a site more user-friendly, attractive, and easily navigateable than the previous version. A good redesign will hopefully gain you praise and more readers. It should be an upgrade.

Yet not every site can achieve that. Case in point: When Gawker and fellow sites Gizmodo, Lifehacker and Jezebel released drastically revamped sites in February, they were universally panned by users. TechCrunch even published a post claiming the “big redesign is driving people away.”

Today, my email inbox, Facebook newsfeed and Twitter stream were filled with news of not one but three site relaunches: Muck Rack, YouTube, and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. Let’s take a closer look at these newly modified sites.

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