Similar to an office space or shop floor, changing and updating your website is an essential part of keeping your business up-to-date and appealing to your target market. However, there’s a lot that goes into a website redesign project than just a contemporary style and visual aesthetic.
By fully rebuilding the site from scratch, the redesign process should modernise your website, optimising it for improved functionality, higher quality and more relevant content, and faster performance. These factors all work together to create the best possible online experience for the user and the customer journey as a whole. A well-designed website can then become the foundation for successful and effective digital marketing strategies to build upon.
What is a website redesign and why is it important to businesses?
Redesigning a website is a complicated project that involves upgrading your online presence so that it is better aligned with consumer expectations, your unique business goals, and your customer journey.
The website designer will look at the layout, content, navigation, and coding to update the frontend (what visitors see and experience on a website) with the developer addressing the backend (the functionality, coding, compatibility, and overall management of a website). Both ends should be occasionally revisited to make sure everything is working as it should, and for regular improvements and refinement.
Your website represents your digital identity as a business, and for many consumers it will likely be their first interaction with you. With that in mind, it’s important that your website makes a positive first impression to maintain the interest of visitors and guide them to purchase your products or services.
The digital world is constantly evolving, which means it’s easy for websites to become out-of-date as they get older, looking dated and not being able to offer the experience and capabilities that audiences now expect from modern technology.
In these situations, online visitors will simply click off your website and go to a competitor with a newer, more user-friendly site. This is likely to occur if your website isn’t mobile-friendly, you can’t offer e-commerce functionality, or if the page load speed is too slow.
These factors can have a significant impact on your SEO (search engine optimisation) because of the alterations search engines like Google make to their algorithms on a regular basis. Older websites often don’t have what search engines are looking for or they use SEO practices that are no longer relevant or effective, meaning your website will be more difficult for consumers to find.
If this sounds like your current website and you think a redesign will benefit your business, you’re probably wondering ‘where do I start?’. That’s where we can help. The seven steps below will show you how we would work together with you to plan and create your new website and optimise in the best way for generating leads and sales for your business.
Step 1 – Audit the current website
Before committing to a new website redesign from us, we offer a free audit of your current site. This will allow us to identify any issues your website might have and make recommendations on how to fix them in the new design for your website.
A detailed evaluation will be completed by our team, but it will also help if you can provide at least 3 months of analytics reporting if you use Google Analytics or have analytics tracking enabled. The key factors we look at here include:
High bounce rates (users leaving the website or specific pages)
Low total traffic per month
Conversion rates (the number of leads that become sales)
Most popular pages
When it comes to business website audits it is helpful to run free speed tests to assess the performance of a site. Also, we can check that your website has SSL certification and HTTPS protocol. Competitor analysis is another important part of this stage as we can see how your competitors’ websites are performing in comparison to yours in terms of functionality and user experience.
Step 2 – Set goals
Based on the outcomes of the audit, you should now have a better idea of what you want for your website, in both how you want it to look and what you want it to do. If you have defined or a general idea of your business growth goals incorporate them into your website plan. Things such as top product/service promotion priorities and nice-to-have features such as free help and support for prospective customers, will all be very useful for the team bringing your specific vision to life.
We have extensive experience working on websites for both B2B and B2C businesses in a wide range of industries. This means we can understand your goals and our specialised expertise will ensure you not only get a high quality, modern website, but also ongoing digital marketing strategies and support too.
Step 3 – Prioritise user experience
The most effective and successful websites today aren’t created from the point of view of the business. Instead, they focus on the experience of visitors to the website, which will be a key aspect in the overall content and online marketing strategy. This helps to put in place a very user-friendly and positive experience, attracting the attention of potential customers and guiding them through each stage of their customer journey.
To ensure this is suitably achieved, the user is always at the centre of the design process. This perspective is then emphasised in all elements of the design, the user interface, website function, calls to action, content, and more.
Step 4 – Website structure
Our web design and development team will create a website structure, which is essentially an architectural plan for how your website will work. This will include navigation aspects, the site map, main pages, responsive design coding, and core functions.
As technology has progressed it has become essential that websites are able to function on all types of devices and browsers, especially on mobile. With most people depending on their phones and tablets to conduct fast searches for products and services on the go, the website needs to load quickly and be easy to use on these devices.
Step 5 – A tailor-made design
The design stage prioritises the visual aspects, so how the website will look and feel to visitors, which creates the all-important first impression. It can be helpful to look at current trends and see what other businesses within your sector are doing to potentially see if it can work for you.
However, you shouldn’t get too caught up in these, as the design will become confused and not convey your business clearly to your audience. The key thing to remember is that your website is meant to support and showcase your brand, not anyone else’s.
Our team can advise you on what trends have a good amount of longevity, the best design elements to create a positive customer experience within your industry and target market, and how to bring all the design elements you’re interested in together to produce a clean, organised, and uncluttered look.
Step 6 – Developing the website
At this point in the process, your website can start being built, with our team making your ideas a reality using code. During this stage we will add in a CMS (content management system), work within the best practices for search engines, and built out complicated functionality like e-commerce systems, third-party integrations, and membership systems. Also, the content for your website will be written which can include SEO-friendly pages, calls to action, policies, blogs, and more.
Step 7 – Testing the new site
Before you become awash with website visitors, we will test the website, ensuring everything is working as it should. Split tests and usability tests are essential in a successful website redesign, as it enables us to fix any little bugs, improve underperforming areas, and make small but impactful alterations to make sure the site runs smoothly for your audience. When this is complete, it’ll be time to launch your brand-new website!
Deliver Media is a specialist web design and digital marketing agency with extensive expertise and experience in the field. Contact us today and we can help you make your website your number one salesperson.