Website Redesign Tips You Need to Know

I think we can all agree: a website redesign is quite a large undertaking. With so many logistics to consider, preparing for a website redesign can be…exhausting. We help companies redesign their websites all the time, and even for us, it can get overwhelming! Here are five website redesign tips you should consider with every project:

Outline the main concerns of your current website.

If you’re looking for a redesign, chances are there are aspects of your current website that you don’t like. Is the user experience poor? Is the design bland or not responsive? Maybe your website is plagued by one or several of the common issues that require a redesign.

These are the things you should be thinking about when you plan for a redesign. Any reputable web design company will be well aware of the need for good user experience, responsive design, and easy content management. But just make sure you map it out so the designer you choose can nail it.

Drilldown your primary audience.

Any business venture needs a well-defined target audience, because if you aren’t creating content with an audience in mind, it’s simply not going to be effective.

Are you targeting CEOs in the tech industry? Or recent college graduates in the medical field? Whatever the case, you need to pinpoint who will be engaging your content. After all, the audience is ultimately what drives the direction of your website, so cater the content towards them.

Define business goals for your website.

Much like your audience, your business goals will play a huge role in guiding the overall feel and aesthetic of your site. A higher education website will differ drastically from an e-commerce site.

Your goal may be to sell a product, grow brand awareness, or attract prospective students. Depending on your goals, your site may feature different components, have a different information architecture, or make certain information more accessible to users.

Gauge your current website’s benchmarks.

The only way to determine if your new website is successful is to compare the metrics of your previous site. What do your page views, sessions, and bounce rates look like? How are you ranking for important keywords? What is your PageSpeed score? Gather all of that data and organize it so when your new site launches, you can gauge how effective your redesign is.

Keep in mind that your benchmarks won’t see drastic changes overnight. Search engines need to crawl your pages, and users need to spend time on your site to generate data. But keep an eye on the analytics to make sure your new site is really working.

Delegate content creation and publishing.

Appealing design is great, but at the end of the day, content is king. Who is going to be in charge of content? What user roles will be established? Answer these questions so that when your new site launches, you will be ready to fill it with great content.

If you’re building with WordPress, you can set up various user roles depending on the needs of your business. You can set up certain users to only edit drafts, while others can have the authority to publish and revise posts. Mapping out user roles keeps the content creation process flowing.

Website redesign tips – the basics

Outline your concerns, drilldown your audience, define your goals, gauge your benchmarks, and delegate content. Simple enough, right? Of course, there is much more to website redesigns than just these factors. But by carefully considering each of these, it’ll help you define the “big picture” and guide you as you dive deeper into redesign process. Happy redesigning!