Quintessential Website Redesign Tips, tricks & best practices to follow in 2020

December 7, 2019

A survey found out that a staggering 4 out of 5 users do not prefer to visit a website that is not updated. Unattractive Website hurts your web traffic big time! Nobody likes to visit a haphazardly designed website.

An attractive design is an important aspect of Web Development. In this article, we will discuss about why your website needs to be redesigned and how it can help your business branding? Also, we will provide information on how to upgrade your website design and development to make your Website more appealing and consequently improve your web traffic.

Does my Website need a redesign?

To answer this question, you need to examine your Website with a magnifying glass and do some introspection. If the answer to any of the below-given questions is in affirmative, then you should go for Website redesigning.

Does your Website look outdated as compared to the Website of your competitor?
Is your website responsive or mobile friendly?
Is the web traffic on your Website either stagnant or decreasing steadily?
Are your users complaining about a lack of good user experience on your Website?
Are you unable to make minor changes like adding a blog post or changing a product description quickly?

Now that the decision of redesigning the Website is made, we shall move on to have a look at the process of redesigning the Website.

Steps of Redesigning an Existing Website

Determine your current standing

In order to improve your website’s design, it is essential that you know what to improve and where to improve. For this conduct, a thorough audit of your website, analyze which are the frequently visited pages, in which section of the website are your users spending maximum time. You will uncover a few gems which you thought were not attracting quality traffic and some star pages which you thought were out-performers, will reveal themselves as not so great pages.

For example: on analysis of your old website you find that the cart abandonment ratio is very high, then it is time to rejig your website to encourage users to complete the purchase more often.

Use Google Analytics to identify patterns in your web traffic. Does your Website experience higher bounce rates? Identify the culprit pages, either change the content in these pages or remove them altogether if they are hurting your Website.

You could even have professional Digital Marketers to help in identifying the problem areas, E.g.:- you would have kept the CTA’s too close, which has resulted in users bouncing off your Website.

By doing this analysis, you will get a fair bit of idea as to which pages need minor edits and which needs to overhaul completely. Everything need not be changed on a website. Especially the elements which are perceived as being the identity of your brand, For e.g.:- if your brand’s logo is well-recognized by the users, then it is advisable not to change it.

Analyzing competition

Analyzing your successful competitors will provide you with invaluable insights regarding web design. What have your competitors done differently on their websites that you can emulate? Where are your competitors faltering? Competitor analysis will help you in answering such questions and get a competitive edge over your competitors.

Moreover, by analyzing competition, you will be able to identify your weak points with respect to your Website structure. Remember not to try to fix something which isn’t broken, if a particular page is generating good traffic, then don’t try to make any drastic changes in this Webpage.

Plan before you play

The redesigning phase of the web development process can be completed smoothly if some time is invested in proper planning. While redesigning your website, it is crucial to visualize all the necessary design elements accurately. Building wireframes and mockups will help you in achieving this goal. By using a wireframe, you could vividly see the effect of placing design elements on the web-page. For e.g.:- you can clearly see whether that button will look good on the home page or not.

See which design elements extend across all the webpages, try to maintain uniformity in these elements. For example, avoid giving different background colors to various webpages on your Website.

Finalize your goals

Website redesigning is a lengthy and cumbersome process. Before initiating this exercise, it is critical to identify your purposes of conducting this exercise. What do you want to achieve? Do you want to build a more extensive email list? Or do you wish to sell your product more often? Or do you want to increase the social media imprint of your Website? Remember to finalize your goals based on cold-hard data and not on your “gut instinct.”

This is important because achieving each goal requires a different strategy, and your Website must be designed to be aligned with this strategy. For e.g.:- if the goal is to achieve more email conversions, then conducting A/B testing with signup forms can work for you.

Re-think about your audience

Many times it happens that the Website which you thought would attract a particular set of users is not build according to the user’s preferences. Sometimes the case is that when the Website was initially developed, the user’s preferences matched with the Website. But with time, the user has evolved and so have his/her choices. In such a case website redesign is imminent.

Re-examine the buyer’s personal preferences, what appeals to the buyer? Create a detailed buyer persona which includes all the details like Location, age, gender, education, hobbies, sports preferences, income, values, apprehensions, social circles, and other parameters.

Creating a detailed user persona will help you in crafting your Website in a manner that is appealing to the user. For e.g.:- If your Website deals with products for senior citizens, then it is a wise idea to use bigger fonts than usual as our eye loses the ability to read smaller fonts as we grow older.

Crafting a perfect user journey is critical for the success of your Website. You should ask the users about their preferences, questions like, “what do you hate the most about this website?”, “what things would you like us to change about our website?” can work wonders, as users love brands which listen to them.

Also Read: Winning New Customers by retaining the existing ones.

Prepare a list of changes which you wish to implement

Once the analysis of what needs to be changed is complete, it’s time to move on to the next step. In this step, we advise you to write down the list of changes that you want to implement on your Website. It could be either installing a cool new tool into your Website or initiating changes to the Website’s look and feel. Do the landing pages look good? Should the content be revamped? What could you do to make the UX of your Website memorable? Ask these questions to find the changes that need to be implemented on your Website.

Once you complete these steps, you will then need to chalk out a detailed plan which entails the website structure and the timeline within which the website redesign process shall be completed. Understand that good things take time to build, hence be prepared to spend anywhere between 2-4 months on your Website redesigning project. The growth-driven iterative design process is a great way to control budgets as it focuses only on the most important pages first and then on gradually improving the other pages. This way, you get the most benefit out of the Website redesigning process without busting the bank.

Another point to consider while deciding on the timeline of your project is whether any big event or sale is coming up. You would want to leverage this event by having your brand new website ready before the game starts.

Tips for redesigning your Website

Mobile-first approach

Google has taken a mobile-first approach while indexing websites from July-2019. As a result, even the web development service providers are increasingly opting for the mobile-first approach. The effects of this will be far-reaching, and your website should be prepared for this. Make your website mobile-friendly, it should quickly load into the small screen, and the images and fonts should be clearly visible on any smartphone screen.

Pay more attention to your blog

Content marketing is one of the most effective ways to drive quality traffic to your Website. Having a blog will help you in executing your content marketing strategy. A point worth noting is that your Website will earn decent money only if it is able to solve the user’s problem. How your product/service intends to solve the user’s problem can be explained to the customer via the medium of blogs. You should keep disseminating quality content, which aims to address the user’s problem on various subjects related to your industry. You are bound to benefit from increased user engagement and social media sharing.

Related: Content is a Key Asset

A picture speaks a thousand words!

We humans are visual beings; we prefer to view a picture or a video as opposed to seeing text. It was found that humans process images 60,000 times faster than version. You should use this to your advantage, implement more visual elements into your website, use captivating images and videos instead of text. One pro-tip is to use custom images instead of downloading and editing them from the internet. When you put your pictures on your website, Google indexes it and websites that have original images with a better perspective, tend to rank higher. You should apply image SEO practices to rank your website even higher on Google. Google image search is a ranking avenue not much explored by the web world, and it’s potential can be tapped by using good Image SEO practices.

Let’s Know: Optimize the web presence with the AI leading SEO

Build a brand and not just a website

Your website is the first place where people go to know more about you. Hence, it is advisable that you take interest in the web development process of your website, and as they say, although the first impression is not the last impression, it definitely has a lasting impression. Your website provides you with an excellent opportunity of conveying your brand’s identity to the external world. If you want to project your brand as a peppy, youthful brand, then you should design the layout of your website accordingly. Use bright colors and humorous, informal language on your website, do not forget to use the relevant slangs and references of pop culture to connect with the users. For instance, using Game of Thrones reference is a good idea, if your target audience consists of the young populace.

Another good tip for using colors is that you should highlight essential tabs on your Website by using contrasting colors. For example, if you prefer to use top of the funnel operations with an orange color, then the bottom of the funnel operations like asking for a quote could be given a blue color. This will help the user in quickly identifying the area where they need to go.

How to: Website Design techniques to improve the conversion rate of your Business

Hear your customers

Voice is going to be the next big thing in the world of technology in the not so distant future. What started with smart home speakers like Alexa and Google Home has spread on to voice-enabled home automation equipment and even cars. According to an estimate, 3 out of 10 website sessions shall be done using voice technology by 2020.

You should equip your website for the future and make it voice search-friendly. Voice SEO optimization will help you in achieving this. As you yourself might have noticed, people are starting to rely more on the internet to find about their local businesses. Suppose you have a pet store, then it would boost your sales if you could rank your business when someone searches the best Pet stores near me.

Use the power of SEO

It might sound cliché, but having a good SEO strategy is still relevant in the digital domain. Optimize your website for relevant organic keywords, do thorough research, and find out quality low competition keywords and mold your content to include these keywords. Focus more on Long-form content and give proper meta-descriptions. Simple steps such as these would help your business in getting a better rank. Web development and SEO are interlinked and you won’t get the benefit of your praiseworthy website if people cannot find it easily on the search engines. You can get in touch with the top-rated SEO companies who can help you efficiently.

Concluding thoughts

Website redesigning, if implemented correctly, can pay rich dividends to you. Do not look at it as a tedious process that ‘has’ to be done, but instead take this as an opportunity to reconnect with your users. A good web development practice is to constantly assess your website’s design, this can be accomplished by keeping a constant watch on your web traffic.

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