A well-designed website is no longer a luxury for long-term business growth and success, it’s a necessity.
This is because it is often a customer’s first touchpoint with your brand.
An outdated website can undermine credibility, while a professional one can significantly elevate it.
As technology and customer expectations evolve, so should your website.
Keeping your website up-to-date and aligned with your business goals requires a well planned website redesign strategy.
When Do You Need To Redesign Your Website?
Your business website is more than just an online presence. It’s a powerful marketing tool that can either make or break your brand’s image. But how do you know when it’s time for a redesign?
Several signs indicate the need for a website revamp. These may include outdated design elements, low website traffic, poor search engine rankings or a high bounce rate.
Additionally, your website might need a redesign if it isn’t mobile-friendly, takes too long to load or doesn’t reflect your current business strategy.
If you’re unsure whether your website is in need of a redesign, conducting a comprehensive website audit can provide clarity.
An in-depth website analysis can highlight areas where a redesign could significantly improve your digital footprint.
Remember, a website redesign is not merely about changing the look of your website. It’s a comprehensive process that involves improving the site’s functionality, user experience and alignment with your business goals.
What is a Website Redesign Strategy?
A website redesign is the process of updating, fixing or repositioning a website typically with the goal of increasing traffic, engagement and revenue.
A successful website redesign project requires a well-thought-out strategy.
This involves clearly defining your business objectives, understanding your target audience and assessing your current website’s performance.
First, you need to have a clear vision of what you want to achieve with the redesign. Is it to increase website traffic? Improve user experience? Or, perhaps, to rebrand your business?
Having clear objectives allows you to develop a focused plan that aligns with your overall business strategy.
Next, understanding your audience is essential. After all, your website is designed to meet their needs and preferences.
Analysing your audience’s behaviour, preferences and feedback can provide valuable insights for the redesign process.
Lastly, assessing your current website can help identify areas of improvement. This includes analysing your website’s design, content, usability and SEO performance.
Here are a few website elements to look at in your redesign:
- Branding
- Navigation (design or structure)
- Typography / Fonts
- Colours
- Copy / Text
- Images
- Icons
- Page layouts
- Call-to-action elements
- Contact forms
- User journeys
By identifying what’s working and what’s not, you can ensure your new website not only looks better but performs better too.
How To Start Planning Your Website Redesign
Embarking on a website redesign requires a clear strategy. The preliminary phase is essential, setting the course for the rest of your project.
Review Your Current Website
The first step in a redesign is understanding your current website inside and out.
Start by conducting a website review by assessing the strengths and weaknesses of your site. This process allows you to identify any existing problems that need to be addressed in the redesign.
You can use tools such as Google Analytics and Google Search Console to gain insights into your website’s performance.
An audit typically includes:
- Checking page loading speeds
- Evaluating the website’s structure and navigation
- Assessing your site’s mobile responsiveness
- Analysing the effectiveness of your current SEO strategy
Set Website Benchmarks
Benchmarking involves measuring your website’s current performance to create a point of reference. This is crucial in understanding the impact of your redesign once it’s complete.
Metrics you might want to track include:
- Page views
- Average session duration
- Bounce rate
- Conversion rates
- User engagement
Tools like Google Analytics, Ahrefs or Semrush can provide comprehensive reports for benchmarking.
Establish Clear Redesign Objectives
Once you have a clear understanding of your current website’s performance, it’s time to define your objectives for the redesign.
Setting clear, measurable goals keeps your project focused and provides a way to evaluate success.
For example, your objectives might be:
- To reduce the website’s bounce rate by 15%.
- To increase the conversion rate by 10%.
- To boost average session duration by 20%.
By focusing on these few areas, you’ll have a clear roadmap for your website redesign.
Remember to keep your goals in line with your broader business strategy and you’ll be well on your way to a successful revamp.
Understanding Your Audience
Behind every successful website redesign is a comprehensive understanding of the website’s audience.
To create a website that resonates with your users, it’s essential to understand their needs, preferences and behaviours.
Conduct User Research
User research is a powerful tool for uncovering insights about your audience. It helps you understand who your users are, what they need and how they interact with your site.
This could be achieved through online surveys, interviews or using analytical tools that track user behaviour.
Develop User Personas
From your research, you can create user personas – hypothetical profiles of your ideal customers.
Each persona should include demographic information, goals, preferences and behavioural patterns. This helps you understand and cater to the needs of your key audience segments.
For example, one persona might be a busy professional who values efficiency and prefers concise, easy-to-digest content.
Another might be a tech-savvy user who appreciates innovative features and interactive design elements.
Create a User Journey Map
A user journey map visualises the process that a user goes through to achieve a goal on your website.
This will give you a clear picture of how your audience interacts with your site, what drives them and where there might be roadblocks to their goals.
For instance, if one of the goals is to purchase a product, the journey might include searching for the product, reading reviews, adding the product to the cart and finally, the checkout process.
If users are dropping off at the review stage, you may need to make reviews more prominent in your redesign.
By understanding your audience, you can ensure your website redesign meets their needs and expectations.
This not only improves the user experience but can also significantly boost conversions and user engagement.
Competitor Website Analysis
Analysing your competitors is a crucial part of a successful website redesign strategy.
By understanding what your competitors are doing right (and wrong), you can gain insights to guide your redesign process and distinguish your website in a crowded marketplace.
Identify Your Competitors
First, identify who your key competitors are. These could be businesses that offer similar products or services or occupy the same industry niche.
Remember, competition can also come from indirect competitors or substitute products that solve the same customer problem.
Review Competitor Websites
Now, just like how you reviewed your own website, you need to critically assess your competitors’ websites as well.
Look at their site structure, design, content and overall user experience. What are they excelling at? Where are they falling short?
Utilise the same tools such as Semrush or Ahrefs as well. These tools will help you uncover the keywords your competitors rank for, their backlink profile and their overall SEO performance.
Establish Competitive Benchmarks
Using the information gathered from the previous steps, create benchmarks based on your findings, similar to how you established benchmarks for your own website.
If a competitor has a load time of two seconds, for instance, your goal might be to match or even beat that in your redesign. If they have a clean, intuitive navigation, aim for that standard.
This exercise of benchmarking against competitors will further strengthen your website redesign strategy.
If their website is outperforming yours in certain areas, strive to at least match, if not surpass them.
Learn From Their Mistakes
Finally, use your competitors’ weaknesses to your advantage.
If you notice a competitor’s website has a high bounce rate or poor mobile optimisation, ensure your website redesign addresses these issues.
By thoroughly analysing your competitors, you’ll be equipped with valuable insights that will inform your redesign process.
It’s a strategic move to stay competitive and ensure your website stands out from the rest.
Website Structure & Design
A significant part of your website redesign project will be focused on the site’s structure and design.
These components directly impact user experience and can make or break your online presence.
Review Your Website’s Structure
A website’s structure, also known as information architecture, refers to how your website’s pages are organised and linked together.
A well-designed structure enhances usability, improves SEO and assists with conversion.
Just like in your initial website review, look at your current structure critically.
Are users able to find what they’re looking for quickly and easily? Is there a logical flow to the site’s content?
In your redesign, plan to create a structure that is logical, intuitive and user-friendly.
The goal should be to reduce the number of clicks a user has to make to reach their desired destination.
Focus on User Experience (UX)
User experience plays a critical role in how visitors perceive and interact with your website.
A good UX design anticipates user needs, provides value and makes the interaction with your website as seamless as possible.
Consider elements such as load time, mobile responsiveness and usability, which we touched on when setting benchmarks for your own website and comparing it with competitors.
Your redesigned website should aim to excel in all these areas.
Prioritise Mobile-Friendly Design
Finally, ensure your website redesign includes a responsive design.
This means your website will automatically adjust its layout and content based on the device the user is viewing it from. A mobile-responsive website is no longer optional, it’s a necessity.
Take note of this when setting objectives for your website redesign. Like we discovered in the auditing phase, a high-performing website must cater to users on all types of devices.
Content Strategy for a Website Redesign
Your website content is what makes your site valuable to visitors.
It’s not just about the design and user experience, although they’re important, but about what your website actually says.
A strong content strategy ensures that your site is useful, relevant and interesting to your audience.
Set Content Goals
Just like setting clear objectives for your website redesign, you need to do the same for your content.
What is the purpose of your content? Is it to inform, entertain, persuade or a mix of all three?
Your content goals should align with your overall business strategy.
For example, if you aim to increase lead generation, your content should be geared towards attracting and converting potential customers.
Plan Your Content
Once you’ve defined your content goals, start planning your content.
You may want to create a content calendar to organise and schedule your content creation and publication.
It’s also a good idea to have a variety of content types such as blogs, videos, infographics and more to keep your audience engaged and interested.
Consider SEO
Remember, part of the reason for a website redesign is to improve your website’s visibility on search engines.
Make sure your content is optimised for SEO.
This means using keywords appropriately, creating quality backlinks and ensuring your content is valuable and shareable.
Timeline, Budget & Project Management
In any redesign project, it’s crucial to set realistic expectations about timeline, budget and project management.
All three are interconnected and are vital aspects of your overall website redesign strategy.
Timeline
Your project timeline will depend on the complexity of your redesign.
Simple updates might take a few weeks, while a complete website overhaul could take several months. Always allow for additional time to account for any unforeseen issues or adjustments.
Budget
Determining a budget for your website redesign can be tricky, but it’s an essential step.
Your budget should take into account all aspects of the redesign, including design and development costs, content creation, SEO optimisation and potentially, the cost of hiring a web development agency.
Remember, a higher upfront cost may pay off in the long run by improving user experience, boosting SEO and increasing conversions.
Project Management
Managing a website redesign project can be complex.
It involves coordinating several teams and tasks while ensuring they’re completed on time and within budget which is why many businesses choose to work with a professional web design agency to manage their redesign projects.
If you’re managing this project internally, check out our blog post on how to write a website brief.
It provides valuable insights into defining your project, setting clear objectives and effectively communicating your vision, which can help streamline your redesign process.
Testing, Launch & Post-Launch Strategy
Every phase of your website redesign strategy is vital, but the testing, launch and post-launch phases often determine your project’s success.
Testing
Testing is a critical stage that should never be rushed.
At this point, you need to make sure every aspect of your website functions as it should.
This includes:
- Performance Testing: Ensure your website loads quickly and all features run smoothly. Tools like Google PageSpeed Insights can help you assess your website’s speed.
- Usability Testing: Test the user experience on various devices and browsers. The aim is to ensure an enjoyable and seamless experience for every user.
- SEO Testing: Check that all your SEO elements (like meta tags, URL structure, internal links, etc.) are correctly implemented to ensure maximum visibility in search engines.
Launch
The big day! However, launching isn’t just about flipping the switch.
Some things you’ll want to consider to ensure a smooth website go-live are:
- Downtime: Coordinate with your web development team to schedule the launch during a period of lower traffic to minimise disruption. If some downtime is unavoidable, communicate this to your users in advance if necessary.
- Hosting Setup: Check if your hosting service can handle the new site. If you’re moving to a new host, ensure that domain changes are correctly done to avoid website downtime.
- Announcement: Develop a marketing and promotional strategy to draw attention to your new and improved website.
Post-Launch Strategy
Your website redesign strategy shouldn’t end at launch.
The post-launch phase is where you monitor your website’s performance against the benchmarks set earlier in your redesign process.
Use analytical tools to measure metrics such as bounce rate, page views, conversion rates and average session duration.
By comparing these metrics to your benchmarks, you can assess whether your redesign has met its objectives.
In this phase, it’s important to collect and incorporate user feedback to make necessary tweaks.
Remember, a website redesign is an ongoing process that requires regular updates and optimisations to meet user expectations and achieve your business goals.
Frequently Asked Questions
How often should I redesign my website?
The ideal frequency for a website redesign depends on your business needs and user expectations. Generally, a redesign every 2-3 years keeps your site fresh and competitive.
How long does a website redesign process typically take?
The timeline for a website redesign project can vary widely based on the size and complexity of the site, your objectives and resources. A small to medium-sized business website redesign can often be completed within 2-3 months.
How can I ensure my website redesign improves my SEO ranking?
A successful website redesign should always take SEO into consideration. This involves maintaining your current SEO strengths, addressing weaknesses and incorporating new SEO tactics. Using an SEO specialist during your redesign process is often beneficial.
How do I avoid website downtime during a redesign?
Minimising downtime during a website redesign can be achieved through proper planning, especially regarding the launch phase. This can involve scheduling the transition during low-traffic times and ensuring your hosting setup is correctly configured.
Can I do a website redesign by myself?
While it’s possible to redesign a website yourself, hiring a professional team can often save you time and ensure a higher-quality result. Professional web designers have the expertise to handle all aspects of the redesign process, from planning to launch and beyond.
Wrapping Up
Redesigning a website can seem like a daunting task, but with a carefully considered strategy, it becomes a manageable and even exciting project.
Whether you aim to enhance user experience, align with your evolving business goals or simply revamp your online presence, a website redesign is an investment in your business’s future.
We hope this guide has shed light on the process, broken it down into digestible sections and shown you that while there’s a lot to consider, it’s all achievable with the right planning.
To your success,
Jackson
