A Complete Guide To Your Website Redesign Strategy

A website redesign is improving or updating your site. When improving your site or changing these things, there are several main areas you should focus on. The content, navigation menu, format, or structure can all be the focus of the redesign.

Ultimately be sure to design for “mobile first”, desktops second, and search engines (SEO) third. If the design is sharp, the content is well-written, and the user experience is engaging then you’re going to have a fantastic new website.

When Should You Revamp a Website?

There are a lot of different times you may decide to do this. One common reason is if you haven’t refreshed your site in a few years and feel it’s looking a little dated.

Another great time to do a website redesign is when you are doing a rebrand or repositioning your business or brand.

This is especially important when you feel that the current website does not fully capture your brand or business. Sometimes, a great website redesign is all you need to make your business stand out from competitors.

Also, you may do this for digital marketing purposes. Like when you launch a new product or service or launch, you may want to revamp your own website.

When you revive your website it’s also a great time to remove broken links and speed-optimize your site. These all can make it easier to reach target customers.

Another common reason for a facelift is due to poor site performance. Perhaps after looking at your Google Analytics you notice that website traffic is low. A lack of site visitors could be because your website is not optimized for mobile devices, runs too slow, or has other technical issues. Also, bad SEO can contribute to this. After all, the search engines are likely where the majority of your target audience comes from.

It could be after noticing that your website pages are incomplete. Your landing pages need readjustment. The website performance is low because there is no accessibility for mobile devices or other reasons.

It could be that Google has flagged your website with technical errors that cause it not to show up in the search engines. You are checking your Google Search Console from time to time, right? Your website may have bad, outdated, or even “black hat” search engine optimization (SEO). These are all valid reasons to revamp an existing website.

How Often Should You Overhaul Your Website?

A redesign project should be done every few years just to keep the website fresh. A dated, stale-looking website won’t help you bring in new customers. The redesign cost is obviously a factor but it’s worth the investment. A lot of time and effort will be put into the redesign process, however, this will pay off with new traffic and potential new customers.

What Does a Website Redesign Do?

Oftentimes, website redesign projects lead to a better user experience and MUCH improved SEO.

When your web designers, (or better yet a professional web design agency), go through your website they will fix all your old, outdated, and cluttered web pages.

They can improve specific pages, meta tags, user interface, and the relevance of your website. Redesigning a website will help reduce bounce rates, bring about more conversions, and improve the website experience, (which engages better with visitors).

As we mentioned, this is also a fantastic time to redo/refresh your SEO for the entire site. As you already know, better SEO means more website visitors.

What Are the Objectives of Revamping a Website?

If you are a business owner, (then depending on your website strategy), you get away with just a light refresh/redesign of your current site. Though many times you may opt to create a brand-new website from scratch.

You may redesign your website as part of a marketing strategy. If you’re not getting enough organic search traffic because of the bad site structure (or a host of other design issues), then it’s definitely a must to redesign your current site.

Wanting to improve your overall user experience or web accessibility is another big objective for redesigning any website.

What Goes into a Website Redesign?

Whether it is an old or new website, a lot of things go into it to provide a good experience. So, redesigning a site takes a lot of planning. The team you hire needs to look at the site and come up with a good game plan.

Based on what you learn from Google Analytics and the Google Search Console, you’ll be able to figure out what areas need attention during the redesign.

The content on your site and how it is laid out is one of the main focuses of the redesign. Having an intuitive design is especially important for an online store.

Visuals, codes, and color combinations used are all studies to make necessary changes. You want to change the look of the site during the redesign. That way it will end up looking like a fresh, exciting, new website.

How Much Does a Website Redesign Increase Sales?

A well-executed website redesign can really boost sales, traffic, and more. However, SEO has to be part of this if you want to see more website traffic. If you just give the site a new look you likely won’t see as dramatic an increase in visitors.

That’s because just redesigning a website alone does not increase traffic or sales. Your SEO team and your designers need to put a coordinated strategy in place to ensure that there is an increase in traffic from the new site. That’s why starting with a solid website redesign plan (that includes input from both your SEO and design teams) is very important.

Having a high-quality, well-optimized website is a good investment toward reaching your business goals. This helps attract the right customers.

8 Critical Steps To Your Website Redesigning

Below are some important steps to follow as you start your site refresh.

1) Inspect the Current Website’s Metrics

Since you built your current website, you probably have some traffic stats you can look at. You’ll want to see how many people are visiting the website, how long they stay, and what they look at.

If not, then you should look into Google’s free analytics tool. This is a great way to measure your website’s current level of traffic.

The most important metric is the number of visitors you have over time. Low visitors will suggest that either the website accessibility is bad, you have technical issues in Google Search Console, or that your website is not search engine optimized.

It may also suggest that you’re not correctly targeting the right relevant keywords to reach visitors.

You should also look at the bounce rate it can help point out if there is a missing web page on your website. The time visitors spend on your site and user behavior are other factors you should consider.

Your analytics are also great for figuring out if you are using enough internal links. This is a great way to help visitors stay on your site longer.

The number of indexed (and especially no-index) pages, backlinks, and your domain authority are also important factors you should look for. These are important if you run an e-commerce or a business website and you want to convert your online audience to your customers.

2) Set Your Goals for the Redesign

There are a lot of reasons you may want to redesign a website. However, knowing these reasons is what will help you come up with your goals. Having clear goals will help you know if your newly redesigned site is performing the way you want it to.

This is why looking at the metrics of your website before a redesign is so important. You need actionable and measurable goals so you know if what you’re doing is working.

Your redesign goals are what will help the agency your hire to tailor the redesign that will help you reach these goals. You will definitely want to improve user engagement on your website to make visitors stay longer.

3) Improve Your Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Improving your search results ranking is probably another major goal. After all, showing up for high-value keywords can result in a lot of traffic and customers. A decrease in bounce rates and an increase in lead generation (or funneling visitors to your landing pages) are all results of better SEO.

4) Establish the Brand’s Image and Messaging

Creating a brand takes lots of work. You need to be clear about your brand image, your message, and the value you will be giving to your audience.

Your brand is important, and your audience should not be confused by it. You need to help maintain consistency. That’s why before launching a website redesign project you need to establish the branding and messaging guidelines.

When you are in your website redesign process be clear about what your brand is. How you want your brand to be seen and perceived will influence all your branding guidelines.

These all have to be consistent on your website and other platforms you use. Your graphic designer has the necessary skills to help figure out your brand’s image.

When you figure this out, it is easier for your website designer to incorporate this into your website redesign project.

5) Conduct a Competitive Analysis

Conducting a competitive analysis on your website will help you know where your website is lacking and how you can do better. Hubspot has a free Website Grader tool that can help with your competitive analysis. With the tool, you know the performance of your website. You can look at that of your competitors too. 

While carrying out this analysis on your competitor’s website, you can ask yourself:

• Why are they performing better? 
• What do you think you should improve on? 
• In what areas are you lacking?
• What ideas can you copy or implement on your website?

Looking at the analysis with these questions in mind helps you plan the website redesign better. You don’t need or want to copy everything about your competitor’s website. But, it helps guide you.

6) Structure the Website

When you make plans for redesigning a website, you also have to look at the structure of the website. Expert website designers help you come up with the perfect structure, navigation, and UX while redesigning a website.

A clear URL structure for your website is equally important. It will help your audience easily know it is your website if they see the URL being shared. You should also look at creating internal links on your website. These links help to keep your pages connected and promote the audience to stay on your website.

In structuring your website, categorizing your pages for easy navigation by your audience is a great idea. While redesigning a website, the navigation of the website has to be easy and simple.

7) Adding or Improving Functionality

Your strategy should include improving functions and features on your website. If there are important functions that are missing on your website, it is also a good avenue to add them. Your agency can build these features and functionalities into your new website.

The site speed of your website is essential. Most websites end up losing traffic if their website takes too long for them to load. Visitors will prefer to go to a competitor’s website that loads faster than to wait for minutes for your website to load. so, usability testing and loading time are a focus.

Menu functionality is another thing to consider. Grouping relevant pages under the appropriate menu is important. Good hyperlink differentiation is important especially if you do not already have it on your website

8) Conversions and Call To Action

While redesigning a website, you also need to focus on conversions and calls to action to see results. You may have a business website and you do not just want to get readers, but you want to nurture and convert your audience to customers.

The conversion metric you set for your website will depend on your goals.

So, talking to an expert will help you achieve your conversion goals through your website redesign. Do you want more subscribers to your newsletter or email lists? You need to include a call to action prompting readers to sign up and also include an easily navigable landing page.

Do you want your audience to see a special or discount for specific products or services? Then you should make the offer more noticeable on the website.

A call to action to make this clear and create a sense of urgency. You absolutely must focus on the call to action if you want to create tangible results.

Optimize for Search Engine

During your website redesign, you have to look at optimizing your website for search engines. The bulk of your visitors uses search engines to find you. So SEO is essentially the lifeblood of your website.

Through the Google Search Console and the analytics, you can look at this and plan your redesign well because Google looks at this when ranking your site.

Additionally, using the right keywords is extremely important. that’s why good SEO starts with keyword research. Targeting the right high-value keywords will really help to build your rankings. Keywords should be in your meta descriptions, contents, important headers, etc. 

You should not also undervalue links on your website. So, you should ensure that broken links are removed from your website and that non-existing or unuseful pages should be removed or redirected during the redesign.

How Much Does It Cost to Remake a Website?

So what will this redesign cost you? Prices will be all over the map. The costs really depend on who is in charge of the revamp.

You should budget at least a few thousand dollars to get a revamped website. Some agencies may charge a lot more, especially for business websites. So, look at your budget and pick the best option that fits.