The truth is; a website redesign takes a complete overhaul of your website. If you are firmly convinced that your site is a turn-off to your customers, with its dated functionalities, then you can take this route. But be ready to invest more money, time, and effort into the exercise. It will be a back and forth game of selecting between designs, templates, plugins, and new content. Eventually, you will get a contemporary, user-friendly, more functional website.
But before you hit-up WordPress, Wix, Pinterest or some other website builders for a few inspirations, here’s a guideline to ensure you have a smooth redesigning process for your users and yourself.
- Strategy
Ask yourself why you are having a website redesign because it isn’t a process you will handle in a jiffy. UX agency Intechnic has it that 33 percent of digital marketers are dissatisfied with the results of a web redesign. So, understanding the reason why you should redesign your site helps you make an informed decision. You will also set your expectations right at the end of the project.
- Planning
Now that you have your goals set and your intention right, it’s time to think about how you handle the process. The best way to handle this project is to start by working backward. Craft a vision document and see what your site will look like in the end. Describe what the site will do, its content, and perhaps why your customers will love it.
You may also write a press release for the site upfront. Clarify why the site exists, its benefits, and how people will see it.
- Start Building
The first thing as you start developing your website is to test out designs. As an enthusiast web owner, you want to understand how your website feels before committing it to code.
There are a few tools and techniques used to do this. Style tiles will give you a response to visual design. Wireframes will work on navigation issues and UX, while mockups and prototypes will let you see the website from your audience’s point. Typically, the latter will give you a touch of your site that closely looks like the final product,
- Implementing on Your CMS
At this point, sit down with your website redesign agency or developer and think through your set of preferred features. Ask questions such as:
- How are leads, that is, subscriptions or email addresses, likely to be captured?
- How frequently will the website be modified?
- Will the site contain downloadable material like e-books, videos, or whitepapers?
- Will audio and video require to be hosted or embedded from channels like YouTube?
- Who will update the site? Are there writers and editors who need publishing permissions?
When doing your website redesign, you will realize that there are some things you may tend to ignore, but the truth is, you will need them in the future. So, be diverse when selecting your web features. For instance, you might be tempted to choose a modest, no-CMS static website generator that works pretty fast. But in the future, when you try to launch a blog, you find the simple generator cannot handle the blog. That’s a big let-down!
Are you still unsure whether your site needs a website redesign? Well, your website needs a facelift if it is:
- Full of Text
If words surpass graphics, images, or icons in your site, then it is time for a revamp. People get tired of browsing a website that is word-heavy. If it is overwhelming and uneasy on their eyes, your message goes unread, misread, or gets lost in the middle of the excess text.
What’s more, your wordy site blocks prospects from finding the call to action knob. What do you want your visitors to do? Download an e-book? Subscribe for a newsletter? It might take them longer to complete the action due to the dense text, and they are likely to abandon the site.
- Difficult to Navigate
There are pages on your site that visitors should find with much ease like Products or Services, About Us, Contact, and Support. If such simple, yet essential pages are hard to locate, then that’s a sign that your site needs a website redesign.
Visitors are always looking for a quick answer. If they cannot get that from your site, they’ll turn to the next good thing – your competitor. And again, if your website is problematic to navigate, search engines will have a tough time crawling your site. The simpler it is for them to locate your website, the better when it comes to matters of ranking your site on SERPs.
- Visually Outdated
First impressions matter! If your site is visually unappealing and looks like it was created in the nineties, you need a website redesign.
According to Derek Halpern’s blog, ‘Social Triggers’, he presents research that reveals that 94 percent of wary respondents credited their discomfort to the site’s design.
Your outdated site demonstrates that you are not in touch with the existing trends. Most importantly, it means it’s difficult for you to position yourself as an expert in the specific field you are displaying on your website.
Therefore, update your website with what’s new, advanced, and simple to digest.
- Not Mobile Responsive
At this time and age, a mobile responsive website is inevitable. If your site cannot display correctly on devices, then it requires a makeover. According to a survey done by AdWeek, consumers spend an average of 5 hours a day browsing on their smartphones. Additionally, 70 percent of all website traffic comes from mobile devices. Most of the time, this exceeds the time people spend on desktops.
The implication here is that prospects want info as they move, and they need it fast! And remember, Google continues to pull down websites that have a poor mobile experience.
Wrapping Up…
If you find yourself running into the above-listed issues and found the guidelines useful, it’s time to consider a website redesign. You might not have all the answers, but taking enough time to assess your website’s online presence gets you closer to achieving your goals.
