With digitization and extensive cell phone usage across the globe, websites have become an integral part of modern-day business. A website can be a marketing asset, point of sale, advertising campaign, or information center, depending on the customer’s needs. Websites can be accessed from across the globe and have the potential to build a brand or even shatter the brand image.
A good website has become paramount for organizations, businesses and brands. The mere presence of a URL no longer satiates the need for an online presence. A website must be maintained and updated to create a positive and recognizable impact.
Why and When do you need a website redesign?
Website redesign is a time-consuming and potentially costly process. Investing valuable resources needs to be backed by reason and logic. Before making the important decision of undertaking a website revamp, it is important to understand the need for one.
A Website design should be undertaken when improvements in the website are required for one of the following reasons:
- Expanding/ growing company
Every company operates with growth as a motive. Due to this expansion, businesses will improve their goods and services. A website serves as a portal for customers to learn about your services; if it doesn’t achieve that, you risk losing them to rivals.
- Improper device responsiveness
Your website should be simple to visit on any device, including desktops, tablets, and smartphones. The purpose of a website is to generate leads; a nonresponsive website practically eliminates your leads. By redesigning, one might gain flexibility and responsiveness.
- Lack of conversions
The main goal of a website is to either initiate a sale or receive the intent for purchase from a potential customer. Your website’s appeal to visitors will determine your clientele. Complex content, business jargon, lack of compelling CTAs, and unappealing designs deter clients from continuing a conversation or initiating a purchase. Redesigning your website is the solution to this problem.
- Changing market trends
As far as market trends are concerned, “Change is the only constant.” The dazzling and zany website may be popular one day, but the next, minimalist websites are all the rage. The key is that your website should follow industry trends, particularly in design.
- Subpar UI/UX
A good website enables users to navigate easily and experience what the designers intend. A website that lacks continuity or ease of navigation is a big turn-off for frequent visitors. Redesigning is the best course of action and streamlining the user experience is the answer.
- Rebranding or refreshing branding
Brand image is extremely important and directly impacts how consumers view you and your brand. Your brand’s image determines whether you can make clients feel joyful or depressed. If you believe your brand’s digital presence does not match its essence, you need to revamp the presence to bring about alignment.
- Optimizing content
Content is a vital cog in the success of a website. Content has to be appealing, interesting, relevant and SEO optimized. Content is the fuel that can propel your website from obscurity to popularity. Updating and optimizing content is a valid reason to revamp your website.
Here are a few things you should be aware of before beginning a website redesign:
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What are the most valuable pages on your website?
Recognize the most valuable pages on your website. You should have a clear picture of your website’s ecology, examine your wireframes, and understand which pages should be treated carefully and which can be completely scrapped and rebuilt before you begin your website redesign.
Categorize your website pages depending on traffic and conversion rates and redesign based on priority and vulnerability.
1. High Traffic + High Conversion Rate – Redesign with extreme care
These are the most important and priceless pages for your company: You must approach them cautiously and with ten times more attention than you would with anything else you plan to revamp on your website because any errors you make here could have dire effects.
2. High Traffic + Low Conversion Rate – Redesign to improve conversion.
These pages are crucial because of the conversions they generate, even if they don’t receive a lot of traffic. As a result, you must proceed with caution when redesigning them to avoid damaging anything that is already effective.
3. Low Traffic + High Conversion Rate – Redesign with care.
These pages receive a lot of traffic. However, there is a conversion problem. Redesign with the goal of improvement: Because you won’t be jeopardizing conversions with your adjustments, you can be more experimental than in the first two categories.
4. Low Traffic + Low Conversion Rate – Go Bonkers! Experiment!
Due to the minimal traffic, changes to these pages will probably not be noticed, and you aren’t risking conversions. You can redesign these pages on your website as much as you like.
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Who visits your site, and why?
The intent of visitors who frequent your website should be considered before beginning the redesign. This insight helps in creating design and content to increase traffic and engagement. Google has categorized the intent and demographics of visitors into the following:
- I want to know.
- I want to go.
- I want to do.
- I want to buy.
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What encourages or discourages your clients
It’s a good place to start a website redesign to know which pages are the most valuable and who is visiting them (and why), but this information alone won’t guarantee success. There are two major information gaps:
- what persuades/assists customers in completing the tasks and
- what hinders them along the road.
By researching obstacles and hooks, you can get a better understanding of the following:
- When do people encounter problems?
- What is and isn’t working on individual pages.
- What is the review of the overall user experience?
- Whether your present CTAs are effective.
- Whether experiences vary across desktop and mobile devices.
- What is practically preventing people from converting.
- What’s causing uncertainty and annoyance?
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How the revamp will affect your team or business.
Engage people in the process as early as possible. Every employee who interacts with your website has to be informed of the changes because they will affect all facets of your organization.
- The user experience must not be compromised, and the UX and design teams will be vital in determining which design components need to be added, changed, or redone.
- The teams in charge of fresh copy and editorial judgments will need to know where their new information is shown and how much room they have to work with.
- To ensure that nothing breaks on a page and that existing search engine rankings don’t decline after the redesign’s launch, SEO and dev teams will want to monitor the project’s technical components, including a potential URL movement.
- Sales representatives may use the website to gather targeted leads at the moment, so they’ll need to be familiar with its modified layout.
- Success and assistance teams need to know where to lead clients looking for information or problem-solving.
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Key Performance Indicators: How to Use Them To Measure Success (KPIs)
Metrics connected to your bottom line are the most precise approach to determine whether your improvements were successful.
Revenue-related KPIs are directly tied to the goal of your redesign, which was to build a website that your target customers will like and use to make purchases. They consist of the following:
- Quantity of conversions
- Rate of conversion
- Revenue
- Average order value (AOV)
- Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
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How to test your website and what needs to change
You’ve completed your research, established your KPIs, and are prepared to begin the redesign. Your site may be tempted to undergo a total makeover all at once, but focusing on the minor details that can have a significant impact first, making adjustments, and observing the effects is a safer and more effective approach.
- If you have enough traffic to produce statistically meaningful results, A/B testing is frequently a wise choice. Assess the impact of one of your new pieces on your site’s aim compared to the existing site. For instance:
- Check to see if the video on your homepage, which previous clients have expressed a preference for, may be positioned above the fold.
A comprehensive website redesign strategy:
COST ANALYSIS:
The financial costs of redesigning a website are substantial and must be considered. It would be unwise to jump into the website revamp without considering the financial implications for the organization.
Your website will likely make a customer’s first impression of you. Therefore you want it to be impressive. You would require considerable financial resources for that to materialize. Don’t start revamping your website until you have the resources. A website half-heartedly executed is a waste of time and money. Analyze the expense, set aside the necessary funds, and start.
CRO:
Even if you are in a battle with your rivals, there is still plenty you can learn from them. You can benefit by evaluating your competitors’ websites’ appearance, offerings, and functionality. This is because you and your rivals serve the same market, catering to clients with similar requirements, wants, and likes and dislikes. Therefore, if customers enjoy something your rivals offer, you may want to tweak it and adopt it.
ESR:
The web continues to develop faster than your capacity for a redesign. Yes, the web is always changing, and since the last makeover, many items should still be useful to you, and those that aren’t can just be updated.
With Evolutionary Site Redesign or ESR, all of this is relatively easy. This strategy continuously evaluates key problematic regions of your websites and provides performance feedback.
It is not only a quicker method of redesigning but also greatly aids in lowering risk because gradual changes rather than a total overhaul are made over time. Consequently, visitors will have a better user experience, and everyone will remain content. Because of this, ESR is frequently recognized as the best strategy for website redevelopment.