In today’s world, having a website that is outdated or poorly designed can be costly. Websites play a vital role as the first impression of any business as well as providing useful information to potential customers and other stakeholders. A redesign of an existing site can help you ensure your website not only looks great but also provides an improved user experience for users accessing your website on multiple devices including PCs, tablets, and smartphones.
What is Website Redesign?
A website redesign is a complete overhaul of your existing site design, structure, and content. If you’re running an online business or blog that doesn’t seem to be making much headway, a website redesign might help boost traffic, conversions and generate more revenue. The key to a website redesign is to make it look as if nothing has changed for your existing users while incorporating new features that will enhance their experience.
A web design service provider will work with you to improve the aesthetics and navigation of your current site by bringing it up to date with current technology trends. The aim is to help you reach your audience better through a mobile-friendly responsive design that ensures that users have the same content regardless of their device.
Why Should I Consider a Website Redesign?
If you have an existing site, it’s important to consider if your current site is as user-friendly as possible. In the past year over half of the users reported that they had abandoned a website that wasn’t working on their device or took too long to load. A redesign helps to ensure that your content is accessible for all audiences and that your design can be successfully implemented across multiple devices.
The benefits of updating your site are:
1) It ensures your business stays current with technological advancements so you don’t fall behind your competitors.
2) updated design looks more modern. If your site is dated, it’s harder to convince visitors to trust you or convert you into customers.
3) It refreshes the look of your company and business as a whole, especially if your website is from a time before the mobile design was popularized.
4) Updating a site’s look builds loyalty with existing customers and establishes trust with potential customers.
5) A fresh new design shows that your business is on its toes and always evolving to meet customer needs.
6) You’ll save money in the long run – some web designers offer plans for redesigning a site every few years at a relatively low cost.
Factors to consider before website redesigning
A website redesign is a process of updating your site’s design and structure, which can be a real pain to do if you go about it the wrong way.
Before starting any work on a revamp, make sure to consider these five factors first:
1. Define Your Marketing Goals
The first thing to do is define your marketing goals and identify what you expect the site to accomplish for your company. Is the website’s primary purpose customer acquisition, lead generation, brand awareness, education/information, or thought leadership? How does your current website help you achieve those goals? What are the conversion rates from page view to leads/customers/repeat customers? Collecting this data will give you a strong idea of whether or not you’re getting a good return on investment (ROI) from the time and money spent on your website currently – if not, then it definitely warrants a reevaluation with redesigned goals.
This is the most important step in planning a new site design is deciding what marketing goals you want it to achieve. Prioritizing what exactly you want from your website will help you determine how much time to invest into designing it as well as whether or not the end result should be responsive.
Having defined marketing goals will help you understand how to create an effective web design as well as improve your site’s usability for its users. You shouldn’t just take any inspiration from other sites or follow flashy trends without considering why those features are being used. It may turn out that those “trendy” additions simply don’t suit your audience. Think about what’s going to help further promote your business online and serve the purpose of your site, first and foremost.
2. Conduct a competitor analysis
Before you start, take into account your competition and look at their current web presence to determine whether or not certain features are strong points of differentiation, strengths that would be smart to exploit, areas of weakness worth attacking, or opportunities for improvement in the content/design/functionality realm. On top of this, consider if there are any new sites out there with cool bells and whistles you’d like to include on your site but are unsure how to implement them without blowing the budget or wasting time building something that doesn’t work within the constraints of your CMS platform. Having a clear picture in mind about how your site needs to exceed user expectations and improve conversion rates is definitely a plus when planning a site redesign.
Once you know what your website needs, next you’ll need to consider what your competitors are doing right now in terms of their web designs. Take note of any sites that are stealing away users from your site and ‘reverse engineer’ the elements you notice they’re using successfully. You can even go as far as trying to figure out how these players are getting more traffic than yours at the end of the day – consider this step as finding loopholes in their success formulas that can be applied to your own site’s promotion strategy.
3. Perform a website audit
When was the last time someone outside of your company visited your website? Conducting an audit is the best way to uncover any issues on the site that might be preventing prospects from engaging with it or making it difficult for them to find keys quickly and easily. If you’ve never done this before, we recommend using a service like HubSpot’s Website Grader or Google Analytics. If you’re not sure where to start with technology, be sure to consult your marketing department or website developer.
Before rushing into any major changes, take some time to do an inventory of every single element on the site, including its content. Review everything, from the images to the text and even the overall layout arrangements. Get yourself a piece of paper and ask yourself if each element on your site is doing its job, i.e., is it helping you meet your marketing goals? If not, then it’s time to remove or re-arrange elements so that they’ll be useful in promoting those same goals.
4. Update your content
Many businesses have fallen into the trap of updating their site with stale, outdated information. As search engines are able to crawl more sites through indexing, having new relevant content can help them grow in rank and attract attention from the right prospects at the right time. Consider creating media assets that include how-to videos, eBooks, or slide presentations for use on social channels.
Take a look at some of those posts from past months that have been ignored by both search engines and users alike – they may need an update so as to provide more value to readers now than ever before. Look for new case studies, research reports, and similar pieces of information that can provide something newsworthy about industry/field/marketing.
5. Choose a CMS platform
One of the most important decisions you’ll make when it comes to building out your website is selecting which CMS platform to use. For search engine optimization purposes, you’ll want a system that makes it easy for site editors and designers to create new pages with optimized content without relying too much on custom coding knowledge.
If you’ve had your website built with some sort of CMS, be it WordPress or Joomla, SmallBizTrends has some good tips on how to choose the right one. If your site isn’t powered by a CMS, then consider asking your web developer to set one up for you on the server that you’re planning to use for your redesigned website. Then, learn how to use it so as to maintain its content yourself in the future without paying any additional fees for site maintenance.
Conclusion
The 5 factors mentioned above are important components of an effective online marketing plan and should not be ignored if marketers want their websites to run properly and reach new audiences through engines. While there are many reasons to choose to redesign a site, including implementing new features and design changes, it is essential to first look at past traffic patterns and consider which factors might have contributed to any declines or stagnation.
Websites are an essential part of any project, especially if you want your site to look professional and operate well. At Pixel Street – A Web Design Company in Kolkata, we provide high-quality standards throughout every step from initial consultations up until providing clients with fully customized sites at affordable prices!2