Online business and their benchmarkers are rapidly changing. Like your services and products, you need to keep updating your website design to stay in the competition. As an online website, there are many other reasons you need to update your website design, including:
- Optimizing the website performance
- Revive Lost Brand Identity
- Update an Outdated Website Content
- Launch of New Products or Services
- Adding More Functionality to a Website
- Revamping for Responsive Web Design
- For following the search engines’ update
- Targeting new market
These are some vital moments where you need to update the website design. According to the research of Orbit Media, the top 200 marketing companies change their website design every 2. 7 years.
Do you remember when you updated your website?
If you haven't updated your website for a very long time, then it’s your call to update that.
However website redesign sounds easy, but it is actually a task for expert hands. A strategic plan can also help you in your website redesign process to enhance your website’s look. In this blog, we discuss a step-by-step guide for the website redesign process. To learn about the revamping blueprint, read this complete blog.
How to Redesign the website?
Website redesign is indeed the process of making significant changes to improve your website's user experience and user interface. Updating these factors helps you enhance your brand value and get a high rank on search engines. This process involves more than just cosmetic changes; it often encompasses various aspects to enhance the website's overall performance, functionality, and aesthetics. Here are 10 simple steps to follow when redesigning a website:
#1: Identify the Right Time to Redesign Your Website
Before taking any further steps, you need to know if it is time to update the website redesigning process. In this step, you can ask some questions from yourself or your teams, like:
- Does your website need to be updated in terms of design and functionality?
- Is the user experience (UX) suffering?
- Are you receiving a high bounce rate or low conversion rates?
- Is your website slow to load, particularly on mobile devices?
- Have there been changes in your branding or business goals?
- Are you facing security or compliance issues?
- Are you complying with the latest data protection regulations (e.g., GDPR, CCPA)?
- Do you need help with SEO and search engine ranking?
- Are your competitors' websites more advanced or user-friendly?
- Are you experiencing a decline in traffic or sales?
- Do you want to incorporate new technologies or features?
- Are you planning to expand your online presence?
- What are your budget and resource constraints?
- Have you collected user feedback or conducted usability testing?
- Is your website compliant with web accessibility standards?
These are some questions you can discuss and identify whether you need to redesign your website now or not.
If you decide to go with a website redesign, then next, you need to analyze the website.
#2: Analyze Your Current Website
Before the redesign process, you need to review all the metrics and performance of your website that help you in measuring your new website design with the old one. Prepare a report for all the stats and tactics about your website.
- Website Traffic
- Bounce Rate
- Conversion Rate
- Page Load Speed
- User Engagement
- Mobile Responsiveness
- Search Engine Ranking
- Customer Feedback
- Web Analytics Errors and Issues
These metrics you need to analyze if you have a general or company website, but if you have an eCommerce website, then there are some more metrics you need to analyze.
- Average order value of Products
- Cart abandonment ratio
- Product page conversion ratio
- Product category sales trends
These metrics should be tracked and analyzed both before and after the website redesign to measure the impact of the changes and ensure that the new design aligns with your business goals.
Additionally, consider setting specific targets or Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for each of these metrics to guide your redesign efforts and monitor progress.
#3: Determining Goals and KPIs
Defining clear objectives is vital to a successful website redesign. Goals and KPIs provide a clear framework for what you want to achieve with your redesigned website and allow you to measure its success. There are some examples of Goals and KPIs to give you insights about setting clear guidelines for website redesign:
- Identify the business objects like increasing sales, generating leads, improving brand awareness, etc.
- Ensure that your website goals directly align with your broader business goals.
For example, if your business goal is to increase online sales, your website goal might be to improve eCommerce conversion rates.
- Select KPIs that are directly tied to your website goals.
For example, if your business goals are to increase sales, then Conversion rate, average order value, total sales, revenue generated, etc., must be your KPIs for the website redesign.
Once the Goal and KPIs are set, it’s time to set baseline metrics and define target KPIs values.
Now, it’s time to develop a clear action plan outlining the strategies and tactics you'll implement during the redesign to achieve your goals and improve your KPIs.
#4: Plan a New Website Design for Your Site
Website design is the main part of the website redesign process. You need to create a unique website design that matches your business. You can get help from a web design company or read the guide to principles of great website design. This will help you start your creative brainstorming in the right way.
While working on the visual design and user experience, you can also do research and get some web design inspiration from experts’ works. Website design inspiration galleries like TopCSSGallery offer you a wide range of tags and filter options to search for the relevant design for your website.
During new website design inspiration research, you need to focus on creating an attractive, responsive design that is easy to navigate. Pay attention to mobile-friendliness, page load speed, and accessibility.
#5: Choose the Right Technology
Website development technology is the key that can embrace your website redesign effort. You need to be aware of your experience with your current website technology. If you are not happy with your current experience, it is time to change that.
There are many website development platforms available in the market. Whether your current website is not aligned with your new website design or helps you in achieving the next level of your business, making decisions for new website development technology is important.
Do some research and contact Website development companies to learn which platform best fits your business goal and how you can enhance your website.
#6: Create a Sitemap
A website sitemap is important for navigating your website. It helps in creating a clear and organized structure for your website. Linking the pages and clear navigation helps you connect your web pages one to another.
While creating the sitemap, keep in mind that the visitors can easily reach all pages of your website in one or two clicks.
#7: Update Your Website Content
Freshing up your old content is also an important part of revamping your website. There is a lot of content on your pages that gives you good results, so you don't need to update all the content of your website.
Take notes of the high-performance content and analyze why they are performing well. This will help you identify your underperforming content and what you need to change on that portion of the website.
There are some example methods you can apply for identifying your highest-performing content:
- Most viewed Website content
- Top shared content
- High-traffic volume pages
- Good ranked Contents
During the content creation, you need to keep in mind your audience. Your content must fully fulfill your readers' requirements. You need to follow the latest content guidelines from the search engine to make it up to mark and effective for your search engine and targeted audience.
#8: SEO Optimization
For improving the visibility on the internet, SEO is the critical factor. It helps you follow the search engine’s algorithm and enhances your visibility for your targeted users. There are various types of SEO methods used for optimizing a single page.
For example:
- On-page SEO
- Off-page SEO
- Technical SEO
- Local SEO
- Enterprise SEO
- Keyword research
- Content SEO
- Backlinks Optimization
- Link structuring
These are some SEO tactics that are used by digital marketers to promote a website and services. You need to learn about them carefully and implement them during the website redesign.
However, you can read this guide to learn in-depth about How to design an SEO-friendly website that ranks well in Search engines.
#9: Do Testing and QA
After completing the design and optimization, it is time to check the design and all the changes that you made during the website redesign process.
This step helps you identify the loopholes, so you can fix that error to deliver a high-quality, fresh website. When testing the design, the QA tester checks whether the look and feel of the web app or website are in line with the proposed design and overall layout.
Here are the key steps and considerations for website design testing and QA:
- Requirement Analysis
- Functional Testing
- Cross-Browser and Cross-Device Testing
- Performance Testing
- Usability Testing
- Visual Testing
- Content Testing
- Security Testing
- Accessibility Testing
- Browser Console and Error Testing
- Mobile App Integration
- Regression Testing
- User Acceptance Testing
- Bug Tracking and Reporting
Website design testing and QA should be an ongoing process to maintain and enhance the website's quality and usability. It's essential to involve a dedicated testing team or QA professionals and follow a systematic approach to ensure a successful website launch and continued performance.
#10: Launch and Monitor
Once everything is in place, launch your redesigned website. Monitor its performance using analytics tools and gather user feedback. Be prepared to make further adjustments based on data and feedback that you get from your analytics and customers.
Bonus Tip : Marketing and Promotion
After the redesign, promote your new website through various channels, such as social media, email marketing, and online advertising, to ensure that your target audience becomes aware of and visits the updated site.
Remember that website redesign is an ongoing process, and you may need to iterate and make continuous improvements based on user feedback and changing industry trends.
Final Note
Website redesign is a big responsibility for those who are beginners or doing this for the first time. I hope this step-by-step guide will help you in developing your roadmap for starting the process of website redesigning.
Now, it’s your time to start analyzing your website and renovate your website branding.
