While a good web page design and following website best practices can get you better sales, a poor website design can drive away your website traffic and at worse, kill your dream business. Irrespective of your company size, it’s never too late to revisit your company’s organizational goals and get a redesign. Otherwise, it is extremely difficult to take advantage of your existing website traffic. There are many websites that can be said as examples of poor web design which failed miserably after a certain period. In this article, we will provide a detailed guide on when your website needs a redesign, early signs to watch out for, and what things to consider while redesigning your site.
Signs that your website needs a redesign
You might be unaware of the hidden issues that are pulling down your site’s performance. A website redesign can help you know what’s working and what elements need improvement. It lets you tailor your website according to the customer's desire and in turn meet your company’s objectives. So, how do you know if your website needs a redesign? Watch out for these signs:
- Your website design looks outdated.
- You receive continuous complaints from the customers about users’ experience and usability.
- Your website is difficult to navigate and takes forever to load.
- Your website has broken links.
- Your website has high bounce rates and low conversions.
- The content is not updated and no longer solves a customer problem
- Your website is not mobile-friendly.
- It isn’t optimized for SEO.
- Your website no longer resonates with your brand.
If you notice any of these signs, it is time to redesign your website immediately to avoid damage.
What to consider while redesigning your website
- Update the content
- Creating Engaging Content.
- Search Engine Optimization
- Responsive and mobile-friendly website design
If your content is outdated and doesn’t acknowledge the current trends, people will never visit your website after their first visit. Also, preparing your website for search engines is not a one-time task. The content should always be up-to-date, follow the current market trends and consumer behavior, and answer the customer’s questions from time to time. Pick up the keywords that follow the trend and keep updating the content for SEO. if visitors are aware that your website always has the latest information, they are sure to visit your website frequently.
According to a survey, visitors look at 20-28% of your website. Thus you get less time to hold the attention of the readers. Creating shorter blocks, listing viewpoints content, and making use of images, video content, or multimedia will comfort readers and convey your brand message almost immediately. Avoid using too much textual and clumsy content. Use simple language so that it takes less effort for the users to understand your content.
Do you know, that you can attract traffic to your website and establish a strong brand by spending little/no money? Yes, it is possible through search engine optimization. By making your website SEO friendly, if you can rank your website on the first page of Google, your website witnesses huge web traffic. Thus driving higher sales and conversions.
Two decades ago, there is no evidence of smartphones or tablets. With time and the evolution of technology, more digital devices are being invented. The whole internet has gone pocket friendly with the developments of smartphones. Today, people prefer to use pocket-friendly smartphones to buy or know information about anything. If your website is decades old and doesn't have a mobile-friendly design, it cannot be viewed on smartphones, tabs, and other digital devices. Thus, you are losing a huge potential of the audience to your competitors. It is expensive to make your existing website responsive. Rather, it would be cost-effective to redesign your website from mobile-friendliness.
What is a website redesign strategy?
A website redesign is a process of updating the company’s content, structure, and navigation to improve the site’s performance and drive higher sales and conversions.
How often should your website need a redesign?
The answer to this question depends on the following factors:
- How often do your company objectives change?
- How much budget do you allot to the website’s design and development?
- How often do the market trends change?
- How long your website stays responsive and easy to navigate?
- How long does your website convert a considerable amount of traffic?
As long as the above questions give a positive answer, your website can wait. Otherwise, it needs a redesign immediately.
Website Redesign Process
A website redesign is to be done once in a while to comply with the changing industry standards and consumer behavior. A website redesign strategy includes changing the layouts, logos, and color schemes, improving navigation, and user experience, and updating content, coding, etc.
- Perform a Site Audit
- Set Measurable goals
- Look at your competition
- Create a sitemap
- Make sure the well-performing SEO pages are protected
- Choosing the right software
When your business starts to grow, there can be hidden issues that are to be fixed. Performing a full site audit helps you find these types of issues. Also, analyze your current website’s performance metrics to know which metrics can be improved.
Different websites come with different goals. Perform deep auditing on your website to know what is working and what is not working as expected. To know what elements of your website needs redesigning, determine the branding, and unique value proposition of your website.
Analyzing your competition helps you understand what your competitors are doing right, and informs you about high-performing keywords, target audience, and other metrics.
It is a visual representation of how your website structure and navigation look and details about other functionalities. It is generally done in the planning phase of the redesigning process.
Ranking your websites on search engines requires a lot of consistent effort and time taking. By redesigning your website, SEO-friendly web pages can be affected. Thus, it is important to protect the web pages that are ranking high in search engines. Perform SEO auditing to know these metrics. Retain the website URL structure and implement the 301 redirects.
The last and the most important step of the website redesigning process is choosing the right software for the content management system. WordPress is one of the most popular CMS to design and develop fully functional websites. Once the site is launched, it is easier to manage, update and maintain the WordPress website.
Partner with the right web design company
The complete redesign process can be laborious and overwhelming. If done correctly, your website will attract huge traffic and boost conversions. Choose the right web design company that quickly takes you through the redesigning process. Write to us if you need any assistance in developing your website redesign strategy.