A website redesign is a major investment that can significantly impact the success of your online business. Whether you’re rebranding, improving user experience, or optimizing for search engines, a strategic website redesign can help you to achieve your business goals and draw in more potential customers and clients. Here we will break down some of the key considerations you should keep in mind when planning your website redesign project to ensure it’s a success.
Reasons to Redesign Your Website
Before diving into the website redesign process, it's important to evaluate why you’re considering a redesign. Whether your current website is outdated or not aligned with your business objectives–identifying the specific reasons for a redesign helps you to set clear goals for the project.
1. Poor User Experience
One of the primary reasons for a website redesign is to improve user experience (UX). If your current site is difficult to navigate, slow to load, or not mobile-friendly, visitors will likely leave without taking any action. A redesign can focus on making the website more user-friendly by improving navigation, page load times, and responsiveness across all devices. The two pieces to remember and investigate on your existing website:
- Improve User Experience: A seamless UX leads to higher engagement and improved conversion rates.
- Mobile-Friendly Design: With more users accessing websites via smartphones– optimizing your site for mobile is crucial.
2. Rebranding
If your business has undergone significant changes, such as a rebrand, your website should reflect your new brand identity, messaging, and values. A website that aligns with your current branding can help attract your target audience and showcase what makes your business and brand unique. Ask yourself:
- Does My Website Align with My Brand and Values: Ensure that your new website design accurately reflects your updated branding–from colors and logos to tone of voice.
3. Low Conversion Rates
A website that looks good but doesn’t convert visitors into customers isn’t serving your business goals. Redesigning your website with conversion in mind—such as adding compelling calls-to-action (CTAs), improving copy and design on your landing pages, and creating a clearer sales funnel—can lead to better results. You’ll want to consider:
- How To Boost Conversion Rates: A strategic redesign can enhance your website’s ability to convert visitors into leads or sales.
4. Inadequate for Your Business Goals
As your business evolves, your website should grow and evolve along with it. If your site isn’t supporting your business goals–such as generating leads, supporting e-commerce, or improving SEO–it may be time to invest in a website redesign. A website tailored to your business goals is key to achieving sustainable growth, scaling your business, and ensuring cohesive branding across all platforms.
Why Invest in Website Redesign?
A website is often the first point of contact between your business and potential customers– making it one of the most critical components of your brand’s online presence. For this reason, investing in a website redesign is about more than just aesthetics; it’s about aligning your online presence with your business goals, optimizing the user experience, and building long-term value. Let’s break down the reasons why investing in professional web design and the accompanying website redesign strategy is essential for business success.
5. Saves Time and Resources
Hiring a professional team to handle your website redesign can save you time and resources in the long run. A well-designed website is less likely to require frequent updates, debugging, or performance fixes, allowing you to focus on other areas of your business. The main takeaway here:
- Business Efficiency: A professionally designed site reduces the time spent on future maintenance and troubleshooting–and takes all the DIY web design hours off your plate.
6. Requires a Specific Skillset
A successful website redesign requires a combination of skills, including UX/UI design, coding, content strategy, and SEO optimization. Partnering with a creative agency or studio ensures you have access to these specialized skillsets, rather than trying to manage the redesign in-house. As your business grows and scales, you’ll want to bring in professionals to give you that edge up on the competition.
- Know Your Expertise: Professional web designers bring the necessary technical skills to ensure a smooth, strategically sound, and successful project.
7. Ongoing Maintenance and Support
After the initial redesign, ongoing maintenance is essential to keep your website running smoothly. This includes updating plugins, fixing bugs, and ensuring compatibility with evolving search engine algorithms and security standards. This is where a creative agency or studio can be a massive help in keeping your site up-to-date, bug free, SEO optimized, and secure.
- Is It Time to Invest in Long-term Support: Investing in professional support ensures your site remains optimized and secure, and guarantees you have help when you need it most.
Things to Consider in Your Redesign
Before beginning your website redesign project, there are several key factors to consider that will ensure the process runs smoothly and aligns with both your short-term and long-term business goals. A successful website redesign isn’t just about refreshing the look and feel of your site–it’s about creating a strategic foundation that supports your brand’s growth, improves user experience, and drives conversions. Without careful planning and consideration, your website redesign may miss the mark, failing to serve your target audience or deliver the results you’re hoping for.
8. Business Goals
Start by defining your business objectives for the redesign. What are you hoping to achieve with the new website? Whether your goal is to increase sales, generate more leads, improve engagement, or establish thought leadership, your website redesign strategy should be aligned with these objectives. Setting clear Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) will help you measure the success of the redesign and determine whether it’s delivering the desired outcomes.
- KPIs and Conversions: Set measurable goals for the website–such as improved conversion rates, lower bounce rates, or increased e-commerce sales.
9. Functionality
Your website's functionality is just as important as its design. Consider what features or capabilities your new site needs to meet both current and future business goals. Whether it's integrating an e-commerce platform, creating additional sales and landing pages, or adding search functionality, make sure your site is equipped with the right tools to engage visitors and drive conversions. Check in on the following when considering your site functionality:
- Seamless Functionality: Ensure that key features work as they are intended to and are easy to use for both visitors and site administrators.
- E-commerce and Conversions: If your site has an e-commerce component, ensure that the checkout process is streamlined and secure. If lead generation is a priority, consider implementing forms, CRM integrations, or live chat features.
- Site Speed and Performance: Improving the technical performance of your website, such as optimizing page speed, can also positively impact both user experience and SEO rankings.
10. Brand and Values
Your website is a reflection of your brand, and it’s essential that it conveys your company’s mission, values, and personality. A website redesign is the perfect opportunity to strengthen your brand’s online presence by ensuring that visual elements like color schemes, fonts, and imagery align with your current branding efforts. Additionally, the tone and messaging of your site’s content should be consistent with your brand voice to create a cohesive experience.
- Brand Consistency Across All Platforms: Ensure that your redesigned website aligns with your overall brand guidelines, including logos, color palettes, and tone of voice, to reinforce brand recognition and trust with visitors.
- Clearly Communicate Brand Values and Mission: Clearly communicate your company’s core values through both design and content to build a stronger connection with your audience.
11. User Experience
User experience (UX) should be at the forefront of your redesign. Focus on creating a user-friendly site that is easy to navigate, responsive on mobile, and designed with the customer journey in mind.
- UX Focus: The more intuitive and efficient the user experience–the more likely visitors are to stay on your site and take action.
12. The Technical Stuff
One of the less glamorous but critically important aspects of a website redesign project is managing the technical side of things. You’ll need to consider what platform you’ll use, how you’ll migrate content, and how to handle existing URLs to avoid broken links. Ensuring that all your old URLs are properly redirected using 301 redirects will prevent losing valuable search engine rankings and maintain your site’s SEO authority. Technical considerations to keep in mind:
- Platform Choice: Whether you choose a content management system (CMS) like WordPress, Shopify, or a custom-built platform, make sure it supports your website’s goals and can scale as your business grows.
- Content Migration: Plan for a smooth migration of existing content, ensuring that no critical pages, blog posts, or product information are lost during the transition.
- 301 Redirects: Setting up 301 redirects for old URLs ensures that visitors and search engines are seamlessly redirected to the new pages, preserving traffic and SEO rankings.
13. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
A website redesign is the perfect opportunity to improve your search engine optimization (SEO). Since Google and other search engines prioritize well-structured, fast-loading, mobile-friendly websites, focusing on technical SEO during the redesign can lead to significant traffic gains. Your website’s structure, internal linking, metadata, and keyword integration should be optimized to improve search visibility and rank higher in search engine results.
- On-Page SEO: Make sure each page of your redesigned site includes optimized title tags, meta descriptions, and header tags that incorporate your target keywords.
- Site Structure: A logical and intuitive site architecture not only enhances user experience but also helps search engines crawl and index your content more effectively.
- Mobile Optimization: Ensure that your website is mobile-responsive to cater to users on smartphones and tablets, as well as meet Google’s mobile-first indexing standards.
Common Website Redesign Mistakes
Avoiding common mistakes can save you time, money, and frustration during your website redesign. While it’s tempting to focus on the visual appeal or rush to get the new site live– overlooking key elements can lead to poor performance, lost traffic, and missed opportunities. Here are some of the most common website redesign mistakes and how to avoid them.
Inadequate Planning
Proper planning is crucial for a successful website redesign project. Skipping steps like testing, content mapping, or developing a staging site for review can lead to delays and poor performance post-launch. Remember these steps for a successful launch:
- Test and Review: Thoroughly test your redesigned site in a staging environment—a non-live version of the website—before the official launch. This allows you to spot bugs, usability issues, and broken links without affecting your live site. Make sure to conduct multiple rounds of testing across different devices (mobile, tablet, desktop) and browsers to ensure your site is responsive and performs well.
- Content Mapping: Map out where all existing content will go on the new site. This will prevent broken links and lost content that can damage your SEO rankings.
- Technical Audits: Plan for any technical requirements such as content migration, 301 redirects, and ensuring all integrations–like CRM and payment gateways–work properly on the new site.
Skipping these steps can lead to a chaotic redesign process and significant headaches post-launch, so it’s crucial to allocate enough time and resources for proper planning.
Not Setting a Clear Goal
Redesigning a website without a clear goal is one of the most common mistakes businesses make. Without knowing why you’re redesigning the site, your efforts may lack focus, and the final product may fail to meet your business goals. Every website redesign should begin by:
- Defining Redesign Goals: Are you looking to increase conversion rates, improve user engagement, or boost organic traffic? Knowing your goals will guide design decisions and ensure the new site serves a specific purpose.
- Aligning with Business Needs: Your redesign should be directly tied to what your business needs most. For instance, if you’re looking to grow your e-commerce business, your new site should focus on creating a seamless online shopping experience and reducing cart abandonment.
- Setting KPIs for Success: Establish key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the success of the redesign, such as higher conversion rates, improved bounce rates, or more traffic from search engines. Without setting measurable goals, you won’t know if the redesign is truly successful.
Lack of Strategy
A beautiful website with no strategy behind it won’t deliver the desired results. Redesigning your website should be about more than just a visual refresh–it needs to be guided by a comprehensive strategy that considers your business objectives, target audience, and long-term goals. Many businesses focus solely on design trends or what they think looks good without considering how it will actually perform for their customers and search engines–and how the design will last over time. When strategizing the redesign of your website, make sure to keep the following in mind:
- Website Redesign Strategy: Create a clear roadmap that outlines your business goals, target audience insights, content needs, and SEO strategy. For example, if your goal is to increase lead generation, your redesign should emphasize conversion-focused landing pages, strong calls-to-action (CTAs), and easy-to-navigate forms.
- Target Audience Analysis: Understand your target audience–which can be done by conducting user research. This will inform your design and functionality decisions, ensuring that the website speaks directly to your potential customers.
- Content and Marketing Alignment: Ensure your website’s content aligns with your overall marketing strategy. It’s not just about design—content structure, messaging, and usability are equally important. Your website should support your ongoing content marketing efforts, from SEO-friendly blogs to landing pages for specific campaigns.
A lack of strategy can lead to a website that looks good but doesn’t achieve real results in terms of traffic, engagement, or sales.
Ignoring User Experience and SEO
Some businesses focus solely on aesthetics and overlook the importance of UX and SEO. A beautiful website won’t succeed if it’s difficult to navigate or doesn’t rank on search engines. Prioritize both design and functionality:
- Prioritize User Experience: The goal of the redesign should be to create a site that is user-friendly and intuitive for visitors to navigate.
- Mobile Optimization: More users browsing from mobile devices than ever before, so having a mobile-responsive design is not optional. Ensure that the redesigned site looks and functions well on smartphones and tablets–providing a seamless experience for users across all platforms.
- SEO-First Approach: SEO should be integrated from the start of the redesign–not treated as an afterthought. Failing to consider SEO can result in a drop in search rankings and traffic. Optimize the site’s structure, implement keyword-rich meta descriptions and headings, and ensure you don’t lose any link equity by implementing proper 301 redirects for any changed or deleted pages.
Rushing the Timeline and Launch
One of the biggest mistakes during a website redesign is rushing the process or launching prematurely. While you may be eager to unveil the new site, launching without sufficient testing can result in performance issues, broken links, or features that don’t work as intended. Rushing can also mean skipping important steps like quality assurance testing, debugging, and reviewing the staging environment, all of which are critical to ensuring a smooth launch. To avoid costly post-launch fixes, remember these:
- Allow Sufficient Time: Set a realistic timeline for the website redesign process, including ample time for testing and revisions. Trying to meet tight deadlines can lead to mistakes, oversights, and a less polished final product.
- Thorough Testing: Before launching, test the website in different browsers, devices, and screen sizes. This should include usability testing to ensure the website is easy to navigate and accessible to all users.
- Staggered Launch: Consider doing a soft launch or beta testing with a smaller audience to identify and fix any potential issues before the full launch. This minimizes the risk of major disruptions or downtime once the site goes live.
