For some of you, you may have heard the term website redesign for the first time. Or maybe you are familiar with this term but are looking to gain more understanding. Whichever side of the spectrum you fall on, this article will be covering everything from what exactly is a website redesign to the essential things you need to know about a website redesign. Let's get into it.
What is a Website Redesign?
A website redesign is a process of renovating your existing website. It is not a total rebuild of your website, but the concentrated redesign of particular aspects of your website. This means that the core of your website's functionality stays intact, but other elements get a touch-up.
Deciding which part of your website needs a touch-up will differ based on the needs of your company and website. However, below are some areas where you can make changes during a website redesign:
• Branding (logo, aesthetic update, etc.)
• Search engine optimisation
• Content update
• Changing the website template
• Social media integration
• User experience improvement
Before you decide to take the next step in your website redesigning process, go through our list of what you should know about website redesign first.
What you Should Know About Website Redesign
Know your Current Website, Your Most Visited Page, etc.
This should be taken as the first step in your website redesign process because for you to know what areas your site needs work in, you need to know what's currently working and what's not. So, accessing your current website will help you determine:
• The problems a renewed website will fix.
• Which features you need to add to your site and which features to remove.
• What the most visited pages are on your website are.
• Which pages have the highest conversion.
This step is significant because it will help make sure you don't break what's working correctly for you while bringing you the benefits you require.
Accessing your website can be carried out using Google Analytics, or any other website analytics tools at your disposal.
Know your Current Website Visitors, and Your Ideal Target Audience
Simply put, when you know what drives people to your website, and who you want your website to attract, the direction your website redesign should take becomes clearer. Things like website structure, website content, and web appearance are more comfortable to create.
Here are a few reasons users visit a website:
• They are curious about your brand, product, or services and want to know more.
• You have content on your website they need and want to read on.
• They are ready to buy a product/service from your brand.
• They are looking for your physical contact details to get in touch.
Also, there are various tools you can use to analyze your current website visitors. Also, creating customers personas will help you determine who your ideal target market is and what they want.
How Will a Website Upgrade Drive ROI
While an upgraded website can be a great spirit uplifter for a business and its members, as a business owner, that shouldn't be your primary goal. A web redesign is a significant investment for any business, so you need to know how your company will benefit from it.
Part of the initial stage of your website redesign process should have you gathering team members to discuss the impact a change will have on your business. Because there are different departments involved in the running and success of your company, having them involved will help the design team make better decisions. Discuss the various features to add to improve ROI, and how to streamline the content to achieve maximum results.
Some teams to involve in this website redesign project plan include:
• UX and design teams
• Content and copywriting teams( if you don't have an in-house team for content creation, there are a lot of writers reviews website such as Online Writers Rating you can visit to outsource this)
• SEO and web development teams
• Marketing team
Study What Your Competitors are Doing
Knowing your competitor and updating yourself on the steps they take is a crucial factor in business growth and not just marketing. The same goes for your website upgrade.
We aren't saying to copy your competitor's website; however, pick out your top competitors or market leaders in your industry and look at what they are doing. By checking out your competitors, you get a frame of reference when going into your website upgrade.
Other valuable insights that come with this step include:
• Best practices
• Market trends in your industry
• Essential features and functionality to add to your upgraded website
• And, essential things to avoid adding to your upgraded website.
Know How to Measure Website Redesign Success with KPIs(key performance indicators)
All businesses have KPIs they use to measure success. So, before you even push a website redesign proposal, you need to make sure that you have outlined the metrics that you will use to measure the success or failure of the website redesign process.
Some ideal KPIs your business could use to measure success or failure could be:
• Did the revenue generated from your website increase?
• Was there an increase in unique web visitors after the redesign process?
• How is the conversion rate post redesign compared to pre-redesign?
• What is the average order value on your redesigned website compared to your old site?
• Is the customer lifetime value higher after the redesign, lower, or unchanged?
There are also qualitative metrics you can use to determine the result of your restructuring. Things like your:
• customer satisfaction score
• customer effort score
• net promoters score, etc.
Without clear metrics for measurement, your business won't be able to determine the success of your website redesign, and by what percentage the redesign affected the company.
Conclusion
Before you decide to go ahead with a website redesign or not, the above listed are just some of the things you need to know. Note that a website redesign is a never-ending process, mainly because customers' preferences, browser technologies, design best practices, etc. are ever-changing. You will need to keep track of these things and more continually.
This article was written by Ana Mayer, a project manager with 3+ years of experience. While
projects can do without her participation (which means almost never), she likes to read and
create expert academic materials for the Best Writers Online review website. Such work gives
her the opportunity to write articles on the most relevant topics of today.