You may need to redesign your website for a number of reasons, such as trying to keep up with your competitors or because it has an outdated style and design.
Where do you start when you decide that your website has to be redesigned?
Even if you are aware of the modifications you want to make, it is still advised that you read through this list of best practices for a website redesign.
1. Take a website audit
Review your current design – identify the positives and note the negatives.
Note the features that work and have been successful, ensure to earmark those, and plan to retain or improve on them in the redesign.
Does the current design yet represent your business goals?
Does it have a modern outlook?
Do you need to change the graphics and images?
What if your brand colors?
2. Involve a web design agency
This comes as the second item to emphasize how important it is to bring on a website design agency early on in your redesign planning.
Agencies are professionals and have experience with creating and redesigning sites for different niches.
Involve your agency with the redesign planning, they can guide you through the rest of the items on this list, as they can be technical and complex for a non-techie to wrap their minds around.
3. Customer/user reviews
Involve your prior and current customers, and get to know what they think about your site.
How does it serve them, is it easy to navigate?
What do they think about your sales funnel?
These are the users, their review is vital to your website’s success.
You are to consider and incorporate their concerns in your proposed redesign.
4. Target audience persona
Picture your best customers in an imaginary or fictional manner; what age range do they belong to?
Are they male or female?
What are their needs?
Employment status? Etc.
This persona will help inform how you redesign your website, features to include or remove, the tone of your content, font and color choices, etc.
5. Customer Journey
A large percentage of people make use of the internet to find information on products, services, or companies prior to deciding to make a purchase.
Understanding how customers become aware of your products or services, to that of purchase or payment is vital to your business success.
This would largely influence your marketing strategies and should inform your website design hence must be factored in for your proposed redesign.
6. Competitive analysis
Inasmuch as you should not focus on competition, it is important to take a look at and imbibe what they are doing right, avoiding the mistakes they make.
Identify what works for them and incorporate those into your business.
7. Set goals for your redesign
Having reviewed how you do business, identified your website strengths and weaknesses, reviewed your competitor sites, and considered your customer journey, it is time to set goals for your site’s success.
This will guide the proposed redesign.
How often do you want to publish blog posts?
What automation tools would you incorporate to achieve the goal?
To boost your email marketing, what services do you plan to use?
What measures are in place for SEO?
Answers to these goals would determine what to add or remove during your redesign.
8. Content marketing
Content is king! The internet is a source of information on everyday needs for many people.
Aside from your website representing your business products or services, you must incorporate a blog for your content strategy.
Outline the type of content you want on your site, figure out posts that attract your target audience, include a call to action (CTA), try to reuse older posts, etc.
9. Mobile responsiveness
Ensure your website is mobile-friendly as everything else is of little to no significance if most of your customers cannot access your website content.
All your pages and posts must be responsive on the several devices on which your users are going to access them.
10. Launch your redesigned website
Now, you can launch your new site.
You can beta-test it with a few of your trusted honest customers before making it publicly accessible.
If you reviewed how your site was initially and redesigned it into what your users and customers now find useful and desirable, worked on your SEO and content strategy, and finally took a cue from a competitor site, you are well placed for a redesign success and consequently a boost in your business growth.
Renix Consulting
Renix Consulting is a website design agency. We help businesses of all sizes create beautiful, functional, and user-friendly websites that represent their brand and achieve their online goals. Check out our portfolio for our previous projects.
Tutorials on YouTube
And if you’re looking for more in-depth WordPress tutorials,be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel! We have a wide variety of videos on WordPress.