It only takes .05 seconds for someone to decide whether they like your website or not. And since 75% of people form that opinion based on web design alone, the look and feel of your website truly impact its ability to convert visitors. Starting to think about a website redesign? You’ll need to keep some things in mind.
Website Redesign Tips
Redesigning a website is no easy task. A good redesign takes months and requires input from a wide variety of stakeholders across the company. Before you start reaching out to website design agencies, here are 7 website redesign tips to help you prepare for the work ahead.
1. Know Your ICP
Before you take on any website redesign the most important first step is to make sure you truly understand your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). When you understand who benefits most from your product or service it gives you a specific audience to build your website for. This provides a framework to help with decision-making along the way.
An ICP is not the same as a buyer persona, an ICP identifies which companies are most likely to benefit from your product, not just which person at a company would be likely to purchase the product. When you craft a website to speak to your ICP it can increase conversion rates and reduce the sales cycle — all things good websites should accomplish.
2. Identify What Already Works Well
Whether you’re completely overhauling your website or just making some design changes, it’s important to understand what already works well. Do your customers rely on a login button on the top navigation bar? Does your contact page have a high conversion rate? Understanding what currently works on your website can help to reduce friction when you launch a new version.
3. Determine Where You’re Losing Visitors
To the previous point, it’s also important to know what doesn’t work on your website. What issues may be causing your visitors to leave your site before filling out a form? Are your solutions or service pages answering the right questions? Does your site take too long to load? Knowing exactly where your weak points are before you start redesigning can help you prioritize goals. Tools like Google Analytics and Hotjar can help you to identify where your website is currently losing traffic and why.
4. Include Your SEO Team
We see this mistake being made more often than it should be. Your SEO team needs to be looped in from the start of your website redesign. SEO experts can work with your design team to help ensure the technical aspects of a website are still being met as the site changes. They can also work with copywriters to ensure that each page of your website has the appropriate keywords, as well as the proper redirect strategy to rank effectively. Waiting until the last minute to bring in your SEO team can result in an extreme drop in traffic when your new website launches — don’t make this mistake.
5. Create Branding and Messaging Guidelines
Before you start hiring copywriters or designers to help with the website redesign, it’s important to create clear branding and messaging guidelines. Having clear branding guidelines in place helps to set the course for business success. Establishing a framework for what colors to use and when, your messaging tone and style, among many other important branding aspects is a critical step to take before you begin work on a website redesign. Without this framework, your website could look like a hodgepodge of voices and styles leaving visitors confused and untrusting of your company.
6. Analyze the Competition
Analyzing your competitors’ websites is always a good idea before taking on a website redesign. Analyzing the competition can help determine:
- How your competitors are positioning similar solutions
- The overall tone and style of the industry
- Things they do well on their website you might want to replicate
- Things they’re missing on their website you might want to include
Gathering competitive intelligence is always a good idea, especially when you’re about to invest a lot of time and money into a new website. Knowing how you can differentiate your site from the competition should be clear to everyone involved in your website redesign project.
7. Set Clear Goals
As with any project you take on, setting clear goals and expectations before you begin the work is critical to the project’s success.
Before inquiring about website redesign services make sure to determine the following goals and expectations:
- Budget
- Timeline
- Key stakeholders
- Available resources (who from your internal team will be assisting in this project)
- Website must haves
The answers to these questions can greatly impact your website redesign cost. Knowing ahead of time the goals and expectations can help make the process much easier for both your internal team and web design team.
Getting Started with Website Redesign
There’s a lot of prep businesses need to do before reaching out for web redesign help. These 7 tips can help guide you in your website redesign process from start to finish. Ready to take on a website redesign? Contact us today to learn how we can help.