We are here to help you plan for digital marketing success in the new year! There are many reasons to redesign your website, and we will cover the major considerations below.
You may be in the market for a full-on rebranding effort or you may just want to add a new feature such as an online store. These are legitimate reasons to invest the time and money in a redesign. But the most important goals of the website redesign process are simple and straightforward: get more traffic and leads for your business.
You may have plenty of good reasons to redesign your website; just be sure that one of them is directly tied to your revenue goals. If you’re just making updates haphazardly without a clear reason or purpose behind the changes, you probably won’t see much in terms of measurable results.
Keeping a website updated is essential for business success. If you want to keep up with the latest trends and stay ahead of your competitors, you need to update your website regularly. There are a few methods that can help you determine when and how often your site should be updated:
1) Check Google Analytics: Google Analytics tracks how visitors interact with your site. If traffic is slow and engagement is low, it may be time for a redesign.
2) Listen to Feedback: Ask customers and clients for feedback about what could make their experience better. If they mention features that you don’t offer or aren’t aware of, this may be a sign that it’s time for an update.
3) Monitor Competitors: Keep tabs on what your competitors are doing and monitor the frequency of their website changes. It is also helpful to use a tool like Semrush to do competitor research on key SEO metrics.
There are many reasons why an organization may choose to update their website: updates may include changes in design, restructuring the site layout or adding new content to meet current customer needs. If you aren’t sure if your website needs updating, we are happy to audit your site and give our advice.
A website redesign can be a complicated process. Before you begin, be sure to calculate all of the costs involved as your budget will determine what you can do immediately and what you may need to wait to tackle down the road.
Many factors go into determining the cost of a website redesign. Some will increase the price more than others. For example, if you want to redesign your website with minimal changes (e.g text layout, colors) then it might be cheaper than if you want to completely change the layout and design of your site.
Set your priorities and clearly communicate them with your website design team to ensure that the must-haves are within scope and budget.
A website redesign timeline is important for managing milestones, deliverables, and expectations. It can also help to avoid any disruptions due to the potential downtimes.
It is not uncommon for companies to take weeks (or more) to carry out a website redesign. It honestly depends on the scope of work. This is why project management is so important (more on that later).
The timeline of this project will need to be carefully coordinated and communicated with sales and marketing, business ops, and other key stakeholders. Getting this buy-in helps avoid problems and ensures a smooth process.
It’s extremely important to consider how to redesign a website without losing SEO advantages. This is a big reason to hire a company to guide you through any updates to your website. If your website is already getting decent traffic from search engines, you must plan appropriately for 301 redirects and on-page optimization considerations to avoid keyword cannibalization.
A website redesign SEO audit is a good place to start to ensure that you don’t do any damage as you create new pages and reorder current content. A professional website design agency will know how to redesign a website without losing the SEO traction you’ve worked hard to earn over the years.
If you’re in charge of marketing for your organization, you are probably pretty clear on why you need to redesign your website and what needs to be done, but your team may have different ideas. This can become a roadblock if not addressed on the front end.
It’s often a good idea to compile a list of website redesign stakeholder interview questions and schedule meetings to get everyone’s feedback. While we don’t recommend managing this process by committee, we do think that giving relevant stakeholders the opportunity to speak into the process ultimately results in a better outcome.
Potential questions to ask stakeholders include:
1) How do you rate our current website?
2) How do customers, donors, or other external stakeholders interact with our website, and are they ways to make improvements from your unique perspective?
3) What would you change about our current process?
4) Would a website redesign hinder or conflict with any of your goals or activities?
Asking for external feedback can offer tremendous and often unexpected insight into the effectiveness of your website. Internal teams often get caught up with inside baseball and fail to see the forest for the trees. External groups can provide perspective and balance to internal priorities.
Potential focus group questions for website redesign may include:
1) How often do you interact with our website?
2) What frustrations do you experience with our website?
3) What do you think our website does well?
4) How could our website be more useful to you and help you solve problems?
Website redesign project management is just as important as the actual design and development process. We have seen many redesigns crash and burn due to poor project management.
A strong project manager will keep track of all website redesign deliverables and communicate updates in a timely manner. Without a project manager, you may experience confusion, missed deadlines, and other costly delays.
That’s why we offer dedicated project managers to each of our website design clients to ensure that expectations are being met and there are no surprises.
As your website designers and developers work on updating your site, your team needs to work on your website redesign launch plan. Anytime you make substantial changes to your website you need a communications plan in place to ensure that all stakeholders and customers are in the loop.
There are a variety of ways to announce website changes. This is a great time to use video to discuss the changes and demonstrate any navigational updates that impact user experience.
Promoting your new website on social media is a great way to get the word out and build momentum. Facebook advertising and search engine pay-per-click (PPC) may also be a good strategy if budget allows.
When you work with our team on a website redesign, we will help you outline a plan to announce your new website and leverage all available resources to create the most effective website redesign launch plan.
If you are searching for a dedicated team to update your website, we would love to chat with you. Our team offers a wide range of website redesign packages that suit a variety of needs. Give us a call or send us an email to schedule a meeting and learn more about our website redesign process.
In the meantime, check out these website redesign case studies to get an idea of how we are helping businesses like yours create lead-generating websites.
Case Study: Here’s Why Web Design Can Make or Break the Buyer’s Journey
Case Study: How We Helped a Local IT Company Communicate Their Value to New Communities
Case Study: How a Website Redesign Increased One Nonprofit’s Donations
Case Study: The Appalachian Trail Conservancy is Using Technology to Protect One of Our Most Valued Natural Resources