STUDIO FIVE

Does Your Website Meet Your Business Objectives?

A well-designed website is crucial for capturing attention and driving success in today’s digital landscape. For business owners, entrepreneurs, and professionals, a website redesign is not just about aesthetics; it’s an opportunity to enhance functionality, improve user experience, and maximize your online impact.

However, before diving into a redesign, it’s essential to consider key website redesign considerations that can shape the outcome of your project. From understanding your target audience to optimizing for search engines, each factor plays a pivotal role in creating an outstanding digital presence. Join us as we explore the vital elements to ensure your website redesign is effective and impactful.

Why Should You Launch a Website Redesign Project?

What’s so important about a website redesign? Why is it worth the hassle? A website redesign will increase user engagement, conversion rates, and profits. If a website is intuitive and pleasant to use, it’s bound to convert more visitors.

Secondly, it ensures you are on par with your competitors and appear professional and trustworthy. This is particularly important if you’re in a highly competitive industry. You don’t want your web page to look old and boring compared to competitor websites.

Thirdly, it guarantees that you’re using only the latest technologies. As a result, you’re unlikely to encounter any severe website security threats. It also decreases the likelihood of you encountering frustrating technical issues.

Getting the Most Out of Your Website Redesign

Every second client we talk to at our agency wants a redesign or refresh of their business website. And that makes good sense. A website redesign is usually more time—and cost-effective than starting from scratch.

However, redesigning your existing website without planning is not a good idea. To support your business objectives, you must focus on these considerations before starting!

In a recent post, I wrote about outdated web design elements you should avoid. Maybe you found some on your business website. Or a website redesign was already on your mind. You may be expanding your business, launching a new product, or want an updated look and feel for your online presence. Regardless, there are several website redesign considerations you may need to be aware of.

Here are a few website redesign considerations to help you get the most out of this project. A few are design-related, but many deal more with your branding, how you want to update and maintain your website, and how you plan to use your website in the future. We grouped our website redesign considerations into five main sections to simplify it.

Essential Website Redesign Considerations

Before You Get Started

1 – Consider Your Target audience

When redesigning a website, you should first determine who you’re targeting. Is your ideal customer an older woman or a young university student? Next, think about how you want to be perceived by your target audience. Do you want to come across as open, friendly, or more distant and professional?

Pondering such things might seem like a waste of time. Nevertheless, it will help you decide on several important things, from the website’s color scheme to the pictures and icons you will put on the main page. Ultimately, you want to appeal to your potential and existing customers. You will only do that if your new site suits their expectations.

2 – Perform a Website Audit

A thorough website audit should be one of the first things you do before a website overhaul. But what’s a website audit? As the name suggests, it’s a process during which someone examines a wide range of things that impact a website’s quality to identify areas for improvement. These things can range from its design and usability to its status in search engines and loading speed.

Once the audit is over, you will have a general idea of what to focus on when drafting your website redesign strategy. For instance, if your website’s navigation structure is confusing and chaotic, but its performance is acceptable, you’ll focus on user experience design instead of spending hours improving performance.

In addition, an audit is bound to help you determine the cost of redesigning your website. The more problems you find during the audit, the more expensive designing a new site will be.

3 – Get Inspiration from Your Competitors

Remember to gather inspiration before you start redesigning your website. To put it simply, take a look at what your competitors’ websites look like. While doing so, write down what you like about them and what you dislike. You don’t need to use technical jargon to describe specific things if you don’t want to. What matters here is that you can explain what you’re after regarding your website.

For example, you’re envious of your competitor’s brand image. They’re using a particular color scheme that you like. What’s more, the visual elements of their website are sleek and modern. Bookmark their website and use it as a source of inspiration for yourself or for a web design agency that you will task with redesigning your website.

Remember that you don’t necessarily have to stick to just your competitors’ websites. You could also refer to other websites that you like. You don’t have to like the entirety of a website to use it as a source of inspiration, either. Instead, you could focus on just one or two elements, such as its form submissions page or how it looks on mobile devices.

4 – Define Your Business Goals

Remember to define your business goals for your website redesign. For instance, suppose you plan on exploring a different, clear conversion strategy and are eager to turn your website into a lead generation powerhouse.

You should explain your reasoning and vision to whoever is supporting you in your website redesign efforts. Whether it be a world-class web design agency or a team of trusted freelancers, ensure they know what you’re after.

Keep a detailed log of your redesign project’s progress. Write important things down during meetings, ask questions if you don’t understand something, and address your team’s concerns whenever they arise. It’s a surefire way to stay up to date with your project’s progress and ensure that it helps you reach your goals.

Off-Site Considerations

Do you have a fantastic domain URL? Are you happy with your website hosting performance? Have you considered different hosting options? Many critical decisions have nothing to do with a website’s coding or design; instead, they are concerned with off-site issues that can still impact site security, performance, and ease of maintenance.

5 – Domain Name Changes

Has your business experienced a brand shift? Has your target audience changed? Or a better domain name became available? A website redesign is the best time to alter a business website’s domain name, so consider your options. To ensure that you keep all web traffic, I recommend forwarding the old domain URL to the new one until it expires.

6 – Your Hosting Provider

Whenever you begin a website redesign, always check your current hosting provider. Use this free online tool to test your business website. Assess how well it performs and where bottlenecks occur. Compare how easy your site is to use and update and how your hosting plan compares to other options.

If your business has grown substantially or your website sees spikes in traffic, consider shifting to dedicated hosting for data security reasons. A redesign is the ideal time to switch hosting providers if necessary, so investigate your options as much as possible.

CMS Considerations

These elements of a business website redesign have less to do with how a website looks and more with how it functions behind the scenes!

7 – Research Different CMS (Content Management Systems)

Many different content management systems are available, from Drupal to WordPress to custom coding, each with unique pros and cons. Don’t forget to research website builder platforms like Squarespace or even Wix, which can combine website CMS and hosting into a hosted package.

Many companies that decide to invest in a website redesign have websites that run on technology that they’re not satisfied with. For example, their website uses a content management system that doesn’t meet their needs. So, while at it, you should evaluate your current content management system’s performance.

If it’s not satisfactory, you could address this issue in a few different ways. The easiest one would be to stick with your current content management system and do whatever you can to make it fit your business and marketing goals. Sometimes, it’s a matter of installing a few additional plug-ins.

Alternatively, you could opt for a smooth transition to a different CMS. You could also have a web design agency design a bespoke content management solution just for you. That way, you’re guaranteed to end up with a tool that fits your needs perfectly. Remember that the more customized system you’re going for, the more you will have to pay.

8 – Website Usability and Scalability

How many people will manage or interact with the website’s back-end once the redesign is complete? Which CMS is easy to use and learn or might already be known to you and your team members?

At this stage, you need to plan for the website’s ease of use and either select a content management system that is easy to learn or plan on spending some time learning how to navigate the back-end or admin dashboard of your redesigned website.

Scalability is another key consideration: if you need to add or update content often, you must plan. Select a CMS robust enough to handle more content and higher traffic loads.

9 – Determine Your Content Format

Is your business website going to be a fashionable online storefront? Or is it a simple food blog? You may be thinking of a magazine-style website introducing a new product or service. It’s not uncommon for business owners and web designers to change the content format of the website during a redesign.

Different content management systems are better or worse for various content types, so deciding on the content format will give you direction on which CMS will be best for you.

Design Considerations

Once you have all the above squared away, it’s time to get to the nuts and bolts of your website redesign: how your website will look and feel, how it’s organized, and what functionality it will offer.

10 – Website Redesign Style

Should your website redesign be clean and modern? Should it use a flat design or a rich design? Select the design style carefully; it must match the brand image you want to present to visitors.

When you know the web design style, you should gather the collateral for that style: graphics and images. It would be best if you also began thinking about the layout of your home page and any major landing pages.

11 – Website Navigation

Your website’s navigation is a critical element that makes it easy or challenging for visitors. How is your website content organized? Is all your content easily accessible from the primary navigation menu? How many navigation menus will your site have?

Always sketch out sample sitemaps before you implement them, and anticipate how visitors will want to move between types of content. We highly recommend developing a content strategy for anything more than a simple 4-5 page website.

12 – Branding

Your business website redesign will be better if it follows clear branding and a uniform color scheme. To appear relevant and up-to-date, consider incorporating the latest design trends. Select your website color palette to match the brand image you want to establish. Clashing colors and designs are likely to drive potential visitors away.

13 – User Experience

A user experience audit should also be a part of the process of redesigning a website. You can include it in a general website audit. It could also be a separate audit. It depends on who you’re tasking to design your new website.

Not every web designer can conduct a user experience audit. Conversely, a user experience specialist is unlikely to have the skills to evaluate a website from a more technical point of view.

14 – Functionality

What is the point of your business website redesign? What features should you add to increase its visitor-facing functionality? This decision will depend mainly on your target audience. Mobile friendliness is a definite must. However, social login may not be a priority.

To get a better idea, survey your clients and consumers. Some A-B testing can give you more insights. Remember that the purpose is to engage your target audience, not to confuse them with overwhelming choices.

15 – Third-Party Integration

Most websites rely on third-party integrations to achieve peak effectiveness. From Google Analytics to Mailchimp to social sharing, dozens of different integration options can add beneficial functionality and insights.

But there’s a fine line between adding third-party integrations that are helpful and engaging for your website visitors and creating a confusing, disorganized mess. A good rule of thumb is to keep visitor-facing integrations both minimal and relevant.

Remember that third-party integration can conflict with other aspects of your site. We recommend you proceed cautiously and check carefully for unintended design or functionality changes.

Technical Considerations

16 – Page Speed

It’s crucial that your new website loads promptly. The longer it loads, the lower your conversion rate will be. So, if you want your website redesign to result in creating the best website out there, ensuring that it loads as quickly as possible is in your best interest.

If your website isn’t as fast as it needs to be, there are many reasons. The code that makes it run isn’t optimized. Imagine that several different developers worked on it over a longer period. If each one left certain redundant bits of code in there, reaching optimal loading speeds would be difficult.

17 – Search Engine Optimization

If you want your website to appear in search engine rankings and improve domain authority, invest the time and resources to optimize it for SEO. For starters, check whether it’s connected to Google Analytics.

Next, ensure that each asset on your website, whether a photograph or an icon, isn’t too large in file size. The larger it is, the longer it will take to load, which is bad for SEO.

Afterward, creating engaging meta descriptions and titles for your website pages is essential. You should also check whether your website has broken links and has already been indexed by Google. It will not appear on search engine results pages if it’s not indexed.

It would help if you also developed a solid content marketing strategy. What does that mean? It’s about planning what you will write about on your company blog. The best way to do so is to conduct keyword research.

Having done so, decide what important keywords you will target and create a content marketing strategy based on these keywords. Other than that, look at the content you’ve already published that’s performing well and use it as a template for writing future content.

18 – Website Accessibility

If you’re about to redesign your website, consider its accessibility. Would a person using a screen reader be able to browse your website without a hitch? What about someone who can only use a keyboard and can’t use a mouse?

It would help if you catered to the needs of such people. While they might make up a tiny percentage of your website visitors, they will appreciate it. As for the users who do not need such amenities, they’ll value that you’re inclusive.

19 – Performance Monitoring

Let’s say that you’ve already launched your new website. What now? It would be best if you kept on monitoring its performance. In addition, evaluate whether it’s helping you achieve your goals, whether it be gaining clients through inbound marketing or getting you closer to achieving your content marketing goals.

Plenty of tools allow website owners to monitor their websites’ performance. The most popular and essential tools include Google Analytics, Hotjar, GTMetrix, and Ahrefs. Some come in several different versions, each with various functionalities and pricing.

Before purchasing a specific piece of software, determine whether you need its features. You don’t want to pay for something that you won’t use.

Boost Your Business: Enhance Your Online Presence

In conclusion, a website redesign is crucial for enhancing your online presence and achieving your business goals. While it may seem daunting, the process is often more time-efficient and cost-effective than building a new site from the ground up.

However, a successful redesign requires thoughtful planning and consideration of critical factors to ensure it aligns with your objectives. By focusing on these essential elements, you can maximize your online impact and strengthen your brand’s digital footprint. For more information on how to navigate your website redesign effectively, contact us today.

Considering Website Redesign?

You may have considered redesigning your business website. In that case, I hope the above gives you more insights and ideas. At the very least, it should give you the steps to create your website redesign plan.

It is a major undertaking regardless of why you are planning a website redesign. Planning is essential if you want the redesign to succeed. Depending on your abilities and availability, you may wish to consult a professional web designer to guide you through the entire process.

A website redesign, or refresh, as many of our clients call it, is just what your business needs for the upcoming holiday season. If you start thinking about it now, you have plenty of time to begin your website redesign, make and test the required updates, and have a business website better designed to attract, engage, and convert your potential consumers.

If you still feel it’s too much to handle, no worries—we’re here to help! We are a world-class AI web design agency that has designed and developed websites for clients worldwide.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re planning an e-commerce store redesign or creating a new website from scratch. If we take care of it, you can be sure that the result will be a top-quality digital product. So, contact us today, and let’s build something great together!