Are you looking to give your website a new look in the new year? With over 1.5 billion websites on the internet today, it is certainly not a bad idea to try to stand out amongst your competitors.
On the other hand, maybe you’re rebranding your website and need a fresh look to support it. Or you had a website design, but it didn’t work out, so you need a better approach.
In any case, redesigning a website requires a foolproof strategy with a clear vision to address the issue. It’s a tedious process that could go very wrong if you are not careful.
Follow our comprehensive guide to make the entire process smoother and ensure that the redesigned version is a massive success.
1. Process Flow
Short and repeatable cycles are significant for building and running a viable association. Your organization’s size doesn’t matter; any new business measure requires a detailed plan to carry out the process efficiently. Without repeatable cycles, you run the risk of having quality and consistency issues.
When you start with redesigning, it is best to begin with flow charts or process flow tools to outline the process flow. This ensures efficiency by covering all the details in the planning stage.
2. Recruit Smartly
A functional website needs an efficient team that can meet all your website redesigning’s requirements keeping in line with your businesses’ financial plan. When you decide to redesign your website, make sure you have an expert team.
Inward
If you have in-house website specialists and designers, make sure they are capable of meeting your requirements. Every planner can’t be a website specialist, so consider hiring independent designers if you think they can better handle the responsibility.
Offices
An alternative for individuals who need to be less associated with the interaction is to have offices. This includes a staff of subject matter experts to look after every aspect of your site individually to maintain quality.
However, this is a costlier approach, and if you’re struggling with finances, you should pick a less expensive alternative.
Specialist
Recruiting an independent creator is the ideal center course between dealing with the overhaul and utilizing an organization. You get similar plan expertise but at a cheaper value.
However, when hiring an independent designer, make sure that their style aligns with what you’re focusing on.
Configuration Challenge
Charging a plan challenge is an elective technique to employing a consultant for individuals who like to “see it before they pick.” In a plan challenge, you round out a quick brief clarifying what you’re searching for, and planners submit tests depending on what you rounded out.
According to your needs, give the finalists additional notes and then choose the plan you like best. Even though this technique requires extra work, it is an excellent method to get your visual idea down since you plan your whole site.
3. Define Your Audience
To improve your site’s SEO, authority, and validity, it is essential to have data about your audience. It is best to start by addressing the following:
- Who is your target audience?
- What are their objectives in utilizing the site?
- How do they connect with your organization?
- How can you change your site for your potential audience?
- How are you tackling issues at present?
- Do you have personas that address your clients?
4. Buyer Persona
Your website is all about its visitors who land on it. These visitors want to get something valuable out of their time that they spend there.
The best way to approach visitors is by talking in their language and creating the content and design according to your buyer personas. Identify these and redesign your website based on what your most important customers want from you.
According to research, 44% of B2B marketers create opportunities and competition by using buyer personas.
On the contrary, if your redesign strategy involves a change in your target audience, ensure that your content and branding align with it. Consider these aspects when redesigning your website.
5. Use Your Current Performance Metrics
When you redesign your website, you have to make it better than your last one. The best place to start is to record your website’s current performance metrics and its standing to target those metrics you need to work on during the redesigning process.
No matter what aspect of your website you want to improve, it is best to examine all metrics. The extent to which you focus on each one’s monthly performance depends on its importance towards your goals, but pull out the following metrics:
- Bounce rate
- Number of visitors, visits, and unique visitors
- Time spent on the website
- Total domains for inbound linking
- Best performing keywords for traffic, rank, and lead generation
- Total sales made
- Total form submissions and new leads
- Total pages cataloged
- Total pages receiving traffic
Tools such as Google Analytics provide visibility and tracking of your website’s performance metrics. Additionally, it is helpful to note the tools you used earlier to measure these in the past so you can use the same ones to study the post-redesign metrics for a fair comparison.
6. Set Website Redesign Objectives
When you think of redesigning your website, figure out why you want to do so and make sure the reason is a good one. A website design is not just about how it looks to the visitors but how it functions.
According to research, 38% of visitors stop engaging with a website if it has unattractive content and layout. This is why you need to be absolutely clear about your goals and align them with measurable results to ensure you get a functional website.
Once you’ve set the goals, communicate them effectively to your team, so everyone is on the same page. Some of these that you can consider for your website are:
- Decrease bounce rates
- Increase time spent on the website
- Improve the number of site visits and visitors
- Enhance domain authority
- Improve the total sales made
- Increase the total form submissions and new leads
- Improve the current SEO rankings
Consider the metrics you took out from your current website to see which ones can be improved and create new goals accordingly.
7. Messaging And Branding
As part of your website redesign plan, have a clear picture of the message you want to send to your visitor, promoting consistency across the website.
A part of your website’s success includes your visitor’s understanding of your work, how you can benefit them, and why they should do business with you instead of your competitors. Your website’s design and content should be enough to attract and convince them.
If you want to change your messaging or branding, think about which aspect you want to alter and incorporate them in your redesigning strategy.
To develop straightforward messaging, don’t use unnecessary industry jargon that can confuse several people. Instead, keep the message short and use clear language for better communication.
Furthermore, for branding, select your website’s visual aspects worth keeping and those you want to redesign. If you’ve come up with a new logo, color scheme, or style, apply these to your website to highlight through it.
8. Protect SEO Pages.
Your website’s metrics play a significant role in your online visibility. To increase new sales or leads, you have to make sure people find your site and visit it. You can use the following SEO incorporated website designing tips:
Make A 301 Redirect Strategy
One of the most essential strategies to retain link value and traffic related to a specific page is to create 301 redirects. Organize all of these redirects in a spreadsheet with old and new ones and hand them to a professional for proper implementation.
Highly Search-Valued Pages Documentation
Using marketing analytics, highlight the pages with the highest receiving inbound links and traffic, most lead conversions, and those that deal with the most impact topics in the industry. In case you want to move any of these pages, remember to create their 301 redirects.
Keyword Research
Dedicate every page on your website to a specific keyword or topic to focus on. Use SEO best practices to optimize the pages. Additionally, it would help to add new pages and content that cater to the specific keywords to your redesigned website.
9. Assess Your Competition
Even though you shouldn’t entirely rely on what your competitor is doing, it doesn’t hurt to see how they compare to you. You can use tools to look at your website’s performance and that of your competitors to understand their weaknesses and strengths.
Look at their website, see what you like and dislike, and incorporate that knowledge into building your website’s design. After this competitive analysis, focus on the areas that you can improve and make your brand stand out.
10. Leverage Advanced Tools
One of the most critical aspects of the redesigning process is to use the right software to create and host the website.
Content management systems (CMS) are used to expand, design, and produce your website that everyone can see.
You can easily create a highly functional and visually appealing website regardless of your expertise using this software. It is vital to choose a CMS that best suits your website redesign requirements.
11. Staging
This is the filler between development and production.
It ought to be the most precise portrayal of the live site, where QA and testing are generally significant. Here the partners can securely view and test the website to check for any shortcomings.
Consider this as a test barometer: When you are content with the introduction, execution, and usefulness, that is when you will introduce the site to the general population.
After you’ve done this step and cleared your site through it, you can now go forward with production.
What Does Success Look Like?
Use what you’ve realized so far to assemble a procedure for your site upgrade project.
Assess the data you gather and use it to make an all-inclusive strategy. Your technique should respond to the following questions:
- What part does your site play in your association’s general advertising plan?
- Once your new site dispatches, what results will you need to quantify to decide achievement (or have an ROI)?
- What different variables could impact the general accomplishment of your site?
- Are your objectives for the site reasonable? In what period?
- How regularly will you track and report on various achievement measures?
- What is the business benefit of meeting these objectives?
- Have you put a maintenance reassessment schedule in place, post-redesign?
Conclusion
Redesigning a website is certainly not an easy task, but it can increase sales and conversions if done correctly.
Like any other process, it needs significant planning and effective strategies. It is essential to figure out the reason behind your redesigning decision and set a goal to work towards. Additionally, gauge your audience and buyer personas to cater to their needs since your website is meant for them.
Carry out plenty of current research regarding current trends, your current website or those of your competitors to decide what you should and shouldn’t include in your new design.
Follow our guide to plan your next website redesign strategy and create a highly successful and functional website.
Connect with Ryan on Linkedin.
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