10 Things To Take Care Of When Redesigning Your Website
Redesigning one’s website is a major undertaking; businesses don’t usually get into it unless they want to do a major revamp. Use this opportunity to ensure that your website design stays relevant and remains successful over time.
1. Analyze How Users Use Your Site
Use analytics to know who’s visiting your website, when, how long they stay and which pages they visit the most. This information is critical for you to understand what your audience wants from your website. You can use this information to guide you in the redesign process.
2. Cut The Fluff
Evaluate your existing site with a fine-toothed comb. Get rid of unnecessary pages and lengthy pieces of content that no one bothers to read. Put together a list of what you want to retain and mercilessly chop the rest from your redesign process.
3. Set Redesign Goals
Put together a creative brief for your designers. Include major goals such as percentage of increase in conversions, user engagement, enhanced SEO and so on. Determine which software you want to use to measure goals, such as Google Analytics. Set measurable goals for SEO to achieve better results.
4. Create Checklists
First, set realistic expectations. The make a list of the sites you want to use as reference, and decide on your rebranding aspects including colors and fonts. Determine site’s primary goal and make a list of everything you’ll use, including stock imagery and code.
5. Determine Your Design Process
Hire the right people and determine the perfect design process that includes clearly detailed steps for each phase: Research, Brainstorming, Wireframes, Mockups, Design And Development. Share the brief with your marketing team for their input and feedback.
6. Avoid Design By Committee
Avoid putting your design through multiple levels of approval. This will hold up your design and also change the original idea beyond recognition. The best way to determine the features you want to keep is to split test on mockups so you can know what your audience wants.
7. Plan A Thorough QA
During QA, make sure everything’s working as intended. Validate page URLs, and ensure that your old pages are redirected to the new pages. You want to be sure that all tracking scripts are in place to ensure a smooth transition and that you have a good backup and restore process in place.
8. Iterate Till Goals Are Met
Be sure to measure the performance of your goals when your new site goes live. Use tracking data and analytics to validate if goals are being met. Perform site iterations, benchmarking changes to your written checklist till you’re satisfied.
9. Use Responsive Design
Mobile sites are designed to be click-easy, simpler, viewport-adaptable and better written, so why not your desktop site? Make sure your site is easy to navigate, to browse and to read. Avoid panning, scrolling and resizing. Using responsive design will ensure your site is displayed better on small screens.
10. Social Media
Use content to effectively promote your brand, company, products and services on social media. Leverage Facebook plugins to share content or to add quick links to your offerings. Embrace multiple social media platforms and employ consistent visual marketing across them.
