The main questions you need to ask however are:

1. Does the website look outdated? If the answer to this is yes, website redesign is definitely required!
2. Are all the features of my website working? Is my web design free of issues? How is the user experience? These factors are the technical and perceptual aspects of how the customers will view the website.
3. The website is working fine but is it helping in increasing my conversions and sales? Am I making the most of my web design? What can I add or remove to make it better?

A website is a great and essential part of marketing and sales. It is the foundation upon which a business builds its online presence. Through it every type of communication, piece of content and advertisement is shown and makes the customer come back for more. The content displayed gives the customers a clear idea of what the brand is, what it is about and what kind of products and services are offered. It is also a great medium through which you can connect with your customers directly or indirectly by providing contact details. Thus, it is important to make sure your website is hitting all the targets.

More than Looks: Function Matters!

It is important to note that website redesign is not limited to just the look of the website but also the way it functions. If you already have a website you should know about the importance of certain metrics and how they provide insights regarding the web design. You can use Google Analytics to look at metrics like traffic, bounce rate, usage, ranking, conversion and sales. What are all these metrics and how are they important?

• The traffic on your website refers to the amount of data sent and received by visitors on the website. It is the number of web users who visit any given website. The more the traffic on your website the more popular your website becomes.
• Bounce rate represents the percentage of visitors who visit a website and then leave without viewing the other pages within the same site. Bounce rate is basically calculated on how much time a visitor spends on the website. The aim is to lessen the bounce rate by making the website more likable.
• Usage is how long a visitor stays on the website. The aim is to make sure the visitors stay for a long period of time on your website.
• Rankings are a part of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). It refers to a website’s position or rank in the search results page. There are various ranking factors that influence whether a website appears higher on the results page based on the relevance of the content to the search term, or the quality of backlinks pointing to the website.
• Conversions are the new leads of the websites and how many of these leads have been achieved. The sales are the sales generated from the website or the Return of Investment (ROI) sales. Obviously, more is better.

What next?

After knowing the statistics, get to know more about your target audience and user experience. This is a very important part of web designing. Maintaining a good user experience is what makes the visitors want to come back for more. First create the targets you want your metrics to achieve. Identify the problem areas. Formulate solutions. It is essentially what website redesign is about.

Understand that target audiences may start off relatively small, but it will increase with time. As newer products or services are added to the website, it expands the website into new markets. Thus it is essential that the message you are trying to send across to the people who are most able and willing to buy from you gets to them. Try to look at your website through the consumer’s point of view and understand what they see, feel and experience when using the website. Get to know what and how to appeal to those target audience members which in turn will help you make informed decisions as you create a website redesign. 

Elements Working on Current Website

Maybe not everything needs to be changed on your website. Often some aspects of your website work very well. For instance, if the current logo used by the business receives widespread brand recognition, changing it would not be the best idea. Similarly the website’s color palette, font choices, or photographs may not need a major change or any change at all. Based on hard data from Google Analytics and other tools, what needs to be changed or adjusted and what remains in the website can be decided.

After this is done, make a list of all the things you want to add, remove or change. This can range from colour change to adding a new tool for the customers to use. Maybe new navigation links are required or more call to action buttons should be included. Make sure that every new goal or target you aim for has a proper reasoning behind it. Revise the list and prioritize those items which do not directly be associated with the goals. Do not remove them from the list, but rank the items according to most important to least.

After all this is done, implement it!

Suggestions for Effective Web Redesign

There are many things that can be done in the web redesign for a more effective response. They are:

1. Visual Appeal: Eye-catching visual elements are important! People tend to respond more to images, videos and illustrations more strongly than they do to plain text. Do not go crazy with these elements though. It could give the website a clustered look and lessen the visual appeal. Nowadays minimalistic websites are popular. Looking at the different trends in the web designing world help.

 Try using your own imagery instead of other images available on the Internet. By doing this, it has been found that there is an increase in conversions. The colour scheme of the website is important. In order to make the web redesign pop, using contrasting colours does the trick. By using contrasting colours on the important parts of the website make those parts easier to locate and read. They immediately draw the attention of the visitors to themselves and hence should redesigned as so.

• Define your business more: Show off your business’s personality. By doing so you make it easier for people to connect to you. Publishing blog articles and social media posts are a great way of making this connection. Using colors, fonts, and imagery that reflect your brand identity go a long way in showing off a website’s personality. The content should be written in such a way such that the audience immediately finds the content and does not confuse it with something else.
• Content Marketing: Content marketing is one of the most effective ways to drive traffic towards your website. It is a type of marketing that basically involves the creation and sharing of online material (such as videos, blogs, and social media posts) that does not exactly promote the brand but aims to stimulate interest in its products or services. A blog is one of the easiest and cheapest ways to effectively spread content to all audiences. If you write blogs on topics related to the services you provide or on those topics that help solve problems you will attract a lot of search traffic and social shares.
• Optimisation of SEO: This point is extremely important! From your home page to your blog, your content should be readily and easily found upon being searched for. It helps to use relevant keywords, and adding alternate text to your images. By creating custom meta-descriptions and doing other things makes it easier for Google to crawl into the website and understand the content’s purpose. Publishing high quality content will really boost the search engine ranking. ‘Content’ is king and you need to provide accurate and valuable information on your web redesign. High-quality content involves the creation and updating of web pages that increase time on page (for higher usage rate), lower bounce rate (convince the visitor to go through the website deeply and thoroughly), and provide helpful content for the user.

Including the option of voice search is a popular option to have in today’s day and age. It plays a crucial role in search engine ranking.  According to Google, 72 percent of people who own a voice-activated speaker say that their devices are frequently used in their day to day lives. Optimising the website for voice search is important so that if the customer is using the voice search option, your website shows up immediately.

• All pages mobile friendly: Since more and more people look for content on their mobile devices than on laptops and desktops, it is hard to ignore these small devices. Make sure your web redesign is made in such a way that it looks good on devices of different screen sizes. The sizes of the images and fonts should not exceed a smartphone’s screen size because then visitors using that device will not get access to your website. According to Google rankings and trends, it gives more importance to mobile friendly websites and puts them higher on the search results page. Among the different web redesigns you can implement (responsive, dynamic, or separate URLs) when it comes to rankings, a responsive website is the recommended format. This format also helps in making your website mobile friendly.

In this competitive world, your business needs to be at the forefront. Creating and updating your website gives your website that extra edge over your competitors. If your business website is not doing that well, go to a competitor’s website and see what they have included in their web design. Try to understand what attracts customers to their websites and see if you can apply those things in your website. At the end of the day increasing your sales and profits is the ultimate goal. Web redesigning is a common thing nowadays and really helps in taking your business to the next level!