Is a website redesign really necessary?
Just because your website is functioning doesn’t mean it’s helping you achieve your business goals. A website redesign is an investment that requires time and effort but it can be just what you need to maximize your success online. An easy-to use and responsive website can significantly improve your user experience. Plus, website development services help companies increase their conversion rate, meet the needs of their customers as well as climb up the search engine rankings.
What is the first thing you need to do?
To enjoy the benefits of redesigning your website, the first thing you need to do is make an inventory of all the pages you currently have. When updating your website consider your business goals and your competition’s web design.
To do this you can create a spreadsheet with a table that includes the web pages, landing pages, and blog entries. The table should have the following columns:
- Homepage
- Subpage
- URL
- Status
In case certain pages have a subpage, you should insert the name in the next row (subpage column). Depending on your judgment, simplify your website by removing outdated content or design and envision what could be lacking.
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What are the challenges you can expect when redesigning a website?
Here are some challenges you may encounter when redesigning your website:
- Keeping the brand identity intact
- A drop in conversion
- Keeping all the valuable information without losing it
- Web security threats
- Not remembering the credentials for plugins or other accesses
- Scalability issues
- Etc.
Why redesign a website?
Different reasons push businesses to redesign their website, depending on their marketing goals. In general, companies hire web developers to redesign their website to rebrand it, generate more leads, make it more SEO-friendly or improve the user experience. Below, we discuss in more details the main reasons why you should orchestrate a website redesign project for your business.
1. The site seems outdated or old
Constantly updating your website is difficult amidst a business cycle, but your website design should be responsive to current trends on the Internet.
Here are some signs that your website may be out of date:
- The home page bounce rate is over 95%, even with a small amount of traffic.
- Your website does not appear on search engines.
- The website was designed over two years ago and has not been modified or updated since then.
- The site has nothing in common with most modern websites.
- The software needs to be updated.
- Poor content management.
2. Users have difficulties using the site
An old and unkempt-looking website leaves a bad impression on the user. However, having a modern design website that is difficult to navigate is just as bad for the user experience. Thankfully, the services of web developers can revitalize your online presence.
Users can experience the following difficulties when visiting your website:
- Navigation is messy and chaotic
- The user journey is misleading and confusing
- There are so many CTAs that it’s overwhelming
- The text is not formatted properly to ease reading
3. The business idea has changed
It is very common for companies to change course as they develop, either because the chosen niche is no longer relevant or because a more precise target audience segment has been found. In these instances, changing the brand and therefore the website is a sound idea.
Here are some signs that your business is at this point:
- The logo and your brand are no longer consistent with the narrative or mission of the company.
- The images and messages on the web are not aligned with your business’ current image.
4. No traffic, leads, or sales are generated
The problem could be that once you have users who visit your website, they do not buy anything on your e-commerce site. This may be due to ineffective design, the usability of the site, or an SEO problem.
Here are some signs that you may be facing this issue:
- There is a decent amount of traffic to the website, but no sales.
- Google Search Console says that your website is ranked well for some terms, but these are irrelevant to your business.
- Visitors fill out forms or use live chat, but only to ask if you have any products or services that are not on the website.
To solve this problem, you must determine if the website is attracting the wrong type of people. If that’s the case, you should reposition the website for potential customers. To redesign your website, you will have to determine what are the keywords for which your site is currently ranked and analyze what the user’s search intention is. Once you understand where the gap is, you should correct the search engine optimization metadata, as well as verify the navigation, sitemap, and content.
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5. Your website is too slow
Nobody likes having to wait for the pages of a website to load. Today, users seek to access information as fast as possible. If your page takes too long to load, your potential customers will probably end up on your competitor’s page.
You must take into account several factors, from the encoding to the images you use. Several aspects of a web page can slow it down. If you decide to redesign your website, you can optimize it so that it works faster and loads without problems. If you want to know what types of problems are slowing down your site, you can use Google’s PageSpeed tools. You will be able to know the loading speed of your site and the changes that you should make to improve performance.
6. Your website is not optimized for mobile devices
A website must be adapted to work on mobile devices. People are constantly searching for products and services on their smartphones and tablets. If you want these people to visit your page and buy, you must make sure your web design is responsive. Keep in mind that the user experience on mobile devices is different from the user experience on desktops.
7. There is no micro experience on your site
Micro experiences are something that is growing rapidly as an important part of web design. You may be thinking, what is a micro experience? They are unique website features that make the user experience special. Something as simple as seeing a unicorn fly across the screen when pressing the “contact us” button could do it. These types of experiences or design elements contribute to a positive user experience.
You can add different animations and sounds that speak to your target audience. You can take advantage of redesigning your website to add these kinds of features to create a better overall user experience.
8. Users constantly complain about the site
If visitors have a place to voice their complaints, they will surely use it. On almost all malfunctioning websites, people often leave negative feedback related to the website experience or report bugs. If you start to notice a trend in complaints, you can develop a website redesign strategy to reassess features or fix the issue that’s causing the problem.
Let’s say visitors complain that a pop-up window appears two seconds after reading a blog post. In this case, you should consider whether the pop-up windows on other pages are just as intrusive or if pop-ups and ads, in general, should disappear completely. Feedback is very useful in the redesign process but a website owner should demonstrate a certain level of initiative to troubleshoot problems before they occur.
Web Development Services
Looking for website design services? Publi Web Media takes a 360 approach to help clients optimize their online success. We offer a variety of services to meet your business needs:
- eCommerce website development
- Search engine optimization
- CRM, ERP & SCM systems integration
- Social media marketing
- Telemarketing and customer acquisition
- Web developer
- Other web development services
A redesign strategy could be the solution to increase your conversion rate, improve the traffic to your website and the overall user experience.
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