Hello there! Welcome to this blog where we talk about different ways to get the most out your website through website redesign and take it to the next level. Technology is advancing so quickly that new devices can be considered old fashioned and out dated after merely three or four years. This is true of all devices like phones, tablets, mp3 players, and yes, even websites. Being a business in this day and age requires you to constantly update your content and technology. In the 21st century, it all comes down to what the consumers can see and have easy access to. This means having a good website and typically a presence in social media. Company owners may find this frustrating, but they have to consider or keep in mind why it is important — even essential — to their growth and success. Basically, it makes your customers happy, saves you time and money, and keeps you well-connected and up to date regarding what the people want. As a company, you need to be visible, and this visibility needs to impress. If you already have a website, you must know about the importance of website redesign. You must see big online companies like Pinterest, Amazon, Facebook, Wikepedia etc constantly updating their content and websites to make them more accessible to the consumers and also at the same making the website easier to use.
What is website redesign? Redesign means to modernize, change or improve something that already exists while staying true to the initial guidelines. In the case of making a website it will obviously be designed or redesigned and manufactured with the latest technology available and keeping all the needs of the customer in mind, the company logo, remaining faithful to the graphics of the corporate identity.
There are many steps involved in the website redesign process:
Step 1: Evaluation
Identify what is working and what isn’t. Identify what the strengths and weakness of your current website are and benchmark your current data (both metrics and analytics).
Step 2: Identify your goals
Identify your goals and picture what the end result will be. What is your ultimate goal? Are you just looking for a more professional website or are you hoping to get more leads and sales? Whatever your goals are clarity is an absolute must in order to create a website redesign strategy that meets your expectations.
Step 3: Strategy Creation
The website redesign team will outline a plan for achieving those goals based on your needs. To develop a more professional image then look in depth at competitors’ websites, as well as websites you like outside your industry, to get a better understanding of what your competitors can likely do and how you can make your website better.
Step 4: Assess
Assess and outline whatever major changes you want added or removed from the current website design.
Step 5: Implementation
This is the actual making process where all necessary things are done, from wireframes, mock ups to viewing of sitemaps. Necessary changes can be made along the way.
Step 6: Review and Launch
Final part is testing the website. Run and test the website to ensure that it is functional, error free, that the forms work and most important the website works across all browsers and devices seamlessly. If there are no problems, then launch the website.
When do you know your website needs a redesign? The following will explain:
- It isn’t Mobile Optimized: This is the most important indication that your website requires an update! If you can’t view your own business website on a mobile device, neither can your customers. With the increasing usability of mobile devices to browse the internet, it has been important for quite some time to update your site to be mobile friendly. According to Blue Corona, consumers spend more than five hours on their mobile devices. In 2018, 52.2% of all worldwide online traffic was generated through mobile phones. 51% of customers say that they use mobile devices to discover new brands and products and 69% of smart phone users also say that they are more likely to buy from companies with mobile sites that easily address their questions or concerns (BrightEdge, 2017). So it is pretty obvious that if your website isn’t available on mobile devices, the customers are going to look elsewhere. Within just a few months, more people will be surfing the web from their smart phones and tablets than from their desktop computers. Don’t waste time on letting things run their own course. If your website isn’t where the consumers are, your website will become invisible and solely for this reason, you most definitely need a website redesign.
- Invisible to Search Engines: If you go to Google, Bing or any other search engine and search for a product or service you will find a long list of companies that provide those things. The best and most popular websites show up on the first page. Getting on this first page is another major goal your website needs to meet, because let us face it; nobody looks at the second page of a search result. Ask yourself, does your website show up on the first page of search results? If not, your website needs some serious search engine optimization (SEO). SEO is ultimately about providing the user with the easiest, fastest, best experience possible and a search engine wants to provide the user with what they are looking for, and when it can do that, both parties are happy. We know that a happy visitor will become a returning visitor. By investing in SEO you will be providing search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo critical information so they will place your site in the top 5 spots on the returns page. You can find out more about what SEO is here.
- Change with Advancements in Business and Dated Look: Another reason one might need a website redesign is that it hasn’t kept up with changes in the business. Outdated information can confuse and irritate your customers and cause problems for your staff as well. Thus your content needs to be up to date with clear and important information. If the website is over three to four years old, the website is likely to be lagging behind in design trends. Three or four years is a long time in the website design world and, when your website is just running for the main basic reason, it is tempting and easy to put a website redesign on hold.
Over the years, the creative world of the web redesign has progressed and the competition to capture the customer’s attention just keeps becoming more intense. From different quick tips like hand-made illustrations and page motion animations to dynamic gradients and responsive logos, business websites need to be redesigned to be fresh, memorable and maybe even innovative and inspirational. Web designers often notice that despite what they tell you most clients make their decisions emotionally or personally as opposed to logical decisions so it is important to be visually appealing. An updated and modern design is not just for aesthetic; it is one of the key factors in the customer’s purchasing decision. If this is the website redesign, you website will be more reliable and trustworthy. It will also look more professional and give your business that extra edge over other business websites.
- No Consumer Value: A potential visitor may visit your website once, but if they do not find anything helpful, useful or valuable to them, they will not return. So in addition to current product and service information, you have to fill your website with customer-focused content (like regularly-updated and informative blogs, exclusive mobile web design content, etc.) that keeps the customers coming back for more. It must be understood that a strategy made many years ago might have been to get as many enquiries as possible through an onsite contact form. Today, though, businesses are trying to build authority through blogging and email subscriptions. The aim of the business website is or should be to help generate leads, enquiries or direct sales — depending on the nature of the services being provided. If your marketing activities are constant but you are seeing a decrease in your online sales or leads, it could be a sign that your website is not connecting with your audience.
Whether it is an out dated content-management system (CMS) or a poorly designed call-to-action area (CTA), a lack of key website features will act as an obstacle in your marketing process. If your strategy today is extremely different from when you started your business, it is only natural that your website is evolving to align with your goals and marketing efforts.
- Website just isn’t Working: Being forced to wait forever for pages to load only to be presented with broken links, outdated offers, and a layout that isn’t optimized for a modern day browser is major deal breaker. Not only is it frustrating, it makes the customer less likely to view that website as being reliable. The website might not be at this level of broken, but certain areas of the website may be old and in need of an update. For example, maybe the website hasn’t been optimized for the latest browsers, or there is linking to old pages that no longer exist and were never properly redirected. These issues may seem small, but they play a significant role in the overall effectiveness of your website. Neglecting this for too long can have a significant impact on your traffic and marketing efforts.
Dynamic websites are very useful in website redesign. The biggest advantage of having a dynamic website is that they can be easily updated as per the needs of the business. When using dynamic website design, it is far easier to update and manage the website. Instead of needing to create new pages, you can change your pages as things change. This is particularly useful if you’ve hired a website designer because calling a webmaster so they can make changes to your site can cost you a lot of money. Part of running a website today is being able to customize your actions to the needs of your customers. People browse as individuals, and demand to be treated as such. Whether that means using social media buttons or the collection of cookies, dynamic website design allows you to do all of the things mentioned. This gives you a chance to know more about your visitors and give them the best experience possible. In a dynamic website, you have all of your content organized in a database which makes it much easier to manage and edit. For example, if you uploaded a certain number posts on your website on a certain topic, in a dynamic website you can simply search and filter according to topic and delete those posts all at once.
Dynamic have many interactive features that users have come to expect from modern websites. By investing in these websites, you show how serious you are about your business.