Website is an essential marketing tool for your business, the virtual representation of your services, and the go-to place for your customers. Therefore you must be cautious about how your website looks. Also, creating a website is not a one-time job. You should be updating it regularly as per the new technology and trends. Now if you think your website needs a new look, scroll through the blog to understand what are the basic website redesign requirements to consider before instructing the developer?
Website Redesign Checklist
- Define website redesign goal
- Prepare a wish list
- Make marketing plan
- Evaluate CMS
- Look for visitor feedback/check their requirements
- SEO Audit
- Know market trends & competitor strategies
- Reframe the content strategy
- Ensure website responsiveness
1. Define Website Redesign Goal
In a business, if you do not have goals or specific reasons to perform a task, it won’t end in the desired manner. Similarly, it is crucial to set a goal before planning a website redesign. The following set of goals may help you define your website redesign goal.
- Marketing goals – Increase lead generation, more engagement, maintaining existing customers.
- Customer Support – Involving new technology for prompt responses, better communication strategies
- IT Requirements – Security upgradations, Performance management, scalability requirements
- Change in Operations – New technology integration for cost reductions
These factors will help you finalise the grounds on which you want to redesign the website. It eventually helps the developer to come up with something you are looking for.
Make sure your goals must be defined with digits or else it will sound like a vague brief.
2. Prepare A Wishlist
Website redesign is like a new creation itself, you must be excited, having plans in mind, features you wanted to involve for the first time but could not. Make a list of everything that you wanted and are willing to involve this time.
It is the right time to replan your website and execute it the way you want. Also, make sure you consider the checklist you made last time when you were designing/redesigning the website.
Combine all thoughts and team suggestions and prepare a website redesign wish list.
3. Make Marketing Plan
No matter what aspect(s) you chose for a website redesign. If you are redesigning the website, the marketing plan will need alterations as per the new website. Therefore it is essential to relook into the existing marketing plan and modify it according to the website’s new design.
Why do you need a new marketing plan while redesigning a website?
Your website redesign goals will have something for your customers too, so they should be aware of it, right? Also, this portrays the brand’s activeness and customer-centricity.
4. Evaluate CMS
Alarming situations that it is a high time you change your CMS –
– If your website is processing slow
– Your CMS doesn’t support the features you are planning to add
– It is really hard to manage the existing CMS and their support team isn’t satisfying.
– The CMS architecture doesn’t prioritise the accessibilty
If you are experiencing any of the above situations, this is the right time you switch to another CMS. Also, CMS(s) keep updating themselves. So if you get a good deal with another CMS company while you are in the development phase, you must consider switching to another CMS.
5. Look For Visitor Feedback/Check Their Requirements
The website is for customers/visitors only. Their feedback and requirements should be the topmost priority for you. Check the analytics, look for feedback, analyse the metrics and accordingly make a design. Make sure the website is user-friendly, easy to navigate, easily understandable. These are the basic website hygiene one should follow while designing or redesigning the website.
6. SEO Audit
Let’s talk technical! The customers are important, but the search engine plays a significant role too. Before planning a redesign, you must undergo an SEO audit from an expert and list down the key points you need to take care of when you are making the website again.
Factors to consider while redesigning a website from an SEO point of view
- Page speed
- Add important information as text instead of image
- Optimise images & videos
- Avoid lazy load images
- Optimise title tags, meta tags, meta descriptions, headlines, header tags, alt tags
- SEO Writing
- Keyword Cannibalization
- Content Audit
- User Engagement & Bounce Rate
7. Know Market Trends & Competitor Strategies
Competitors play a vital role in business plans. Check what your competitors are doing to attract customers? What features do they have on their website? Which content strategy they have adopted, and what are their SEO strategies? Go through their websites and compare them with your existing website and the redesign plan.
After comparison, check what competitive strategies and plans you can and should put in your website plan.
8. Reframe The Content Strategy
Content is a part of marketing. You should be refreshing or revising your website content regularly to increase visitor engagement. Also, this time include blogs and case studies on your website. It gives reason to re-visit. According to some statistics, 77% of users read blogs, and it is a great way to convey information about business offerings.
Make sure your content strategy should be engaging and grab more visitors to the website. Also, it should retain the existing readers with updated information.
9. Ensure Website Responsiveness
Website responsive solves many problems such as website looks, information representation, website user-friendliness. Also, according to LinkedIn, half of the search queries take place on mobile devices, and search engines also prefer responsive websites than non-responsive ones.
Conclusion
In the end, we want to add a piece of advice that recreating a website is no less than the creation of a new website from the scratch. Therefore, make sure you discuss the website redesign requirements with the team and take their inputs as well; because the viewer can judge better than a creator. So if you do not want to miss any critical information or attractive feature it is better you take inputs from the entire team. For more website or SEO related tips, subscribe to our newsletter.