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.
“Good design is all about making other designers feel like idiots because that idea wasn’t theirs” – Frank Chimero
(Author of book ‘The Shape of Design’)
Hello there! Welcome to this blog where we talk about traditional web design, its pros and cons, its alternative and some of the trends that are now popular in the web design world. There are basically two kinds of web design: traditional and mobile web design. A traditional website design is the classic way to tackle website design, whereas mobile websites are, for the most part, accessed on a smartphone or a tablet whilst on the go: walking down the street, shopping, eating out, etc. Browsing conditions are therefore different for mobile users compared to traditional users when surfing the Internet.
Traditional web development refers to the act of taking a web framework such as HTML, ASP.NET or PHP and building a website from the ground up. This includes setting up everything from database connections, to setting up database tables, creating separate files for your Contact Us and Products page, and the list goes on. A traditional website generally hosts a lot of information and many pages; it is accessed either from home or the workplace.
Simple forms or marketing examples of websites, such as classic website, a five-page website or a brochure website are often static websites, because they present pre-defined, static information to the user. This may include information about a company and its products and services through text, photos, animations, audio/video, and navigation menus. Each page is coded in HTML and displays the same information to every visitor. Static sites are the most basic type of website and are the easiest to create. A static site can be built by simply creating a few HTML pages and publishing them to a Web server. Since static Web pages contain fixed code, the content of each page does not change unless it is manually changed by the webmaster. This works well for small websites, but it can make large sites with hundreds or thousands of pages difficult to maintain.
A traditional website is a self-contained project with a well-defined finish line, as opposed to ongoing efforts. A traditional web design is familiar and it is what most people think of when they think of website design or redesign and thus is considered the safe option.These traditional websites can be accessed only via a computer and no other devices. This is what makes it better for smaller businesses starting out with few customers.
There are many disadvantages to traditional website design:
1. Large Cost – Even though it is a single expense, it can be a large one-time payment! This payment is usually up front and a huge amount.
2. Change Not Accounted For – Extra features and unforeseen requirements can create cost increases or timeline alterations. Additionally, if any changes are needed once the site is complete, you’ll pay for those new, unplanned features.Design timelines and project scope can shift if your requirements change mid-design.
3. Traditional Web Design Results Are Not User-Driven – The project will have a lot of input from the agency, the designer, and the client, but little will be based on the actual user, how they interact with the site, or what they want.The usability of the website is compromised.
4. Website Redesign Takes a Long Time – The visitors will be met with the “Under Construction” graphic on the website for a few months. This situation is not ideal for business as a major platform of communication will be down. If your customers cannot access your website, they will feel discontent and frustrated. A traditional web design will begin going obsolete as soon as it’s launched.
To add to the point for traditional website design, conventional or traditional web design is the right option for some brands. Those companies that have brilliant marketing momentum and an old fashioned website may choose to invest in a traditional web design approach. If they have more than 10,000 monthly visitors and exceptional marketing assets that don’t include excessive paid search, traditional web design might be the right choice for them.
Now what is the alternative option to traditional web design? A newer inbound approach to website design called growth-driven design. This approach helps get rid of or overcome the cons of using a traditional web design. Traditionally, web design was often a long and drawn out process, where every feature was considered, planned for and then rigidly built into a site, with no room for flexibility or changes. However, growth driven design (GDD) has risen to challenge that, taking on board lean and flexible principles to create a new approach to website design.
With growth driven design approach, you design your site in phases using an agile approach and get a launch pad website up in one month. It is from here where you can immediately measure impact of the new design and evaluate user behavior and data over the first month. Then you can work on your design and content monthly based on consumer behavior of your target personas to make your site better and more efficient, making small, gradual changes like landing page optimization, word choice changes, Call to Action (CTA) buttons, premium content placement, etc. Along the way you also build a prioritized wish list of additional items you would like to apply to your design that take into account new changes to your business or additional requirements.
One of the primary advantages growth driven designs over more traditional web design is the speed at which the business can get their new website up and running. By focusing on getting a launch pad site completed first, with only the business-critical functions implemented, the business can have a new and different looking website up and collect data much faster than with a traditional, website design.
Another benefit of growth driven design is that it allows you to begin collecting customer data about your new website quicker. The business will be able to analyse how the customers are interacting with the site, where they are converting, and which elements of the basic launch pad site have been working well. Whereas traditional web design would have companies are kept waiting longer before the launch of the site for all the functionality to be added, with growth driven design the company can begin making the website better, and quicker, as well as identify which areas the main focus should be on for improvement in future development sprints.
Growth driven design is mainly built around the idea of making optimisations after the launch pad website is launched. This means one can make refinements their priorities, plan out the direction of the website, and change based on the data collected or changes in priority, rather than being locked into a long-term plan with a more rigid website and web strategy. Rather than having an agreed upon a final point as in traditional web design, growth driven design plans to have development and design resources available to make these different refinements, based on the data collected from the launch pad website, as well as the business goals. This gives a massive advantage to businesses to grow and improve their websites.
By keeping in mind how customers are interacting with the website, and where the company can make improvements in the web design, companies make their websites easier and more professional looking. Giving customers exactly what they want and need, you make the customers happy and content and encourage them to visit your website more often. This increases traffic on your website. This is always an advantage for acquiring new customers and keeping the old ones and increasing revenue.
As oppose to the traditional web design method of paying for the entire website, something that can be extremely costly, growth driven design focuses on getting a cheaper launch pad website ready first, then undertaking additional work after that. This approach helps in keeping charge of the budget as the decisions about which areas one would like to focus on are based on the predicted cost effectiveness of any changes made.
In traditional web design, a business would have to have their entire website redesigned on average once every two to three years. In the gap after launch to the release of a new website, changes can be much harder to implement, and leaves the business lacking behind on the latest trends in the industry.
Speaking of trends, let us look at some of the popular styles on trend now. Humans tend to have poor attention spans and impatient. In studies done by Akamai and Gomez.com, 50% of users expect that when they click on a site, it should load in two seconds or less and that they will abandon a site if it takes three or more seconds to load.
It can be seen, a beautiful site is a beautiful site, but if the design is so data-heavy that it takes too long to download, you could be losing loads of revenue due to no one sticking around to even look at your site. Even worse, with the Google Speed Update that went into effect in July 2018, Google has begun prioritizing rankings for sites that load faster than others, and it’s likely that other search engines are soon to follow. This basically means that websites need to be made faster and quick to load in order to make the websites easier to find. Making faster, quicker websites are now a popular trend!
Flat designing is another popular trend! In 2017, designers and developers began creating clean and simple websites for better mobile performance. This really provided a boost to using the internet on mobile devices. Since then, the number of mobile searches has gone ever-upward, and mobile-first design for websites is now a necessity, not just an option. Image-heavy websites load slowly and frustrate mobile users.
Clean, minimalist designs, or flat designs, are characterized by loading quickly and are currently trendy and desirable for two important reasons. First, both mobile users and desktop browsers can experience quick-loading websites. Secondly, they can hold high SEO value. Flat design helps a site fulfill a lot of the speed requirements that search engines are starting to require.
With mobile sites taking priority away from desktop sites, it’s obvious that mobile first design has become a trend. Mobile first web design is about changing the way that websites are designed fundamentally. Traditional web design used to be that a site would only be designed for a desktop or laptop computer and a mobile-friendly or mobile responsive design might be added as well. Mobile first design does just the opposite: it starts with designing the site for the mobile user first before creating a version that will also work for a desktop user.
This push toward mobile first design isn’t just based on ranking factors or SEO. The visual result is something that will first and foremost enhance the user’s experience with the website on the device that they will most likely be searching from. This design trend is meeting the demand that mobile users are requiring and will likely be the trend for a long time to come.
Traditions are not static. Instead, they are constantly evolving with time. New technology brings new thoughts, new ideas and new ways of doing things. These changes should be embraced, especially when they are so beneficial!