Do you know It takes less than a second for users to decide whether they like your website or not?
In fact, 88% of your website visitors won’t come back after having a poor experience with your website.
That’s probably the reason why you’re not getting that much traffic, conversion, or users are maybe even coming on board but bouncing off your website at a high rate. Are these your pain points? Then, you should consider some drastic measures like a website redesign, etc.
A website redesign can take a long time to implement, give results, and convert customers. But still, it is an essential process to get the attention of your ideal customers.
Delving deep, let’s talk about:
- What website redesign really is?
- Why you might need to redesign your website (signs), and
- The end-to-end website redesign process.
Ready? Let's dive right in.
What is a website redesign?
Website redesign is the process of enhancing your webpage’s visual appearance and improving its user experience.
This includes restructuring and re-evaluating the existing content, layout, colour scheme, and navigation. It can also focus on optimising site speed and technical performance, search engine optimization, or switching to responsive web design.
Website redesign is the process of enhancing your webpage’s visual appearance and improving its user experience.
Your website should assist your business’ growth, thus its maintenance is vital.
Why you might need to redesign your website (signs).
There is solid evidence that suggests a website redesign can increase your business value.
From adding value to your marketing efforts to improving your online presence by increasing search engine rankings and more, a redesign project promises a lot.
But there are three main reasons why you might need a redesign for your website.
i) Reparation.
Some reasons why you might want to redesign your website for reparation could be outdated content or interface, not enough responsive design of website pages or elements, and most importantly, the website is too slow.
Keep in mind that more than half of your web visitors will leave your website if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load.
Similarly, 81% of users get a bad opinion of a business if its website isn’t updated or features an outdated design.
ii) Optimization
You might need a website redesign if you think you can use a better user journey or if you want better search engine rankings and more online presence. Along with a good SEO strategy and the contributions of a content marketing team, an optimization-focused redesign process can work miracles in reaching target customers and even sales.
iii) Rebranding
Think your website needs a makeover after some changes to your market strategy, company culture, or simply the color palette change of your brand logo? Then you might need to start a rebranding-oriented redesign process.
Such a redesign strategy isn’t rare either; Instagram, YouTube, and many other big companies are among rebranding redesigns.
There can always be a different reason behind your redesign decisions; what matters the most is that you know how to do it right.
- The end-to-end website redesign process.
As we’ve already stated, revamping a website is an extensive project and has its own challenges. But our guide might help you with creating a high-level plan for a successful website redesign process.
i) Establish your dedicated team or reach out to a UX design agency
Before starting the website redesign, you need to prepare for the project. If you don’t have a team yet, assemble one who will manage and oversee the entire process. Having a dedicated team ensures that their focus isn’t divided and that they can devote their full attention to the redesign process.
Ideally, your team includes: a UX Designer, a Project Manager, a Marketing Manager, a Content writer, and a Developer.
If you don’t have a designer or UX team at your company, you can reach out to a UX agency, like Spoke Design Labs. We assign the most suitable UX designers and researchers to work full-time as an extension of your product team. This means they will focus 100% only on your website redesign project.
ii) Determine the business objectives of the website redesign.
As mentioned earlier, it’s important to know the reasons why you’re doing the redesign. If you can define your business objectives, it’ll be easier to measure its success.
So let’s start with some questions:
- What does your business need?
- What’s missing right now?
- What goals are you trying to achieve?
These questions are easier said (in this case asked) than done (answered). Knowing your goals in advance helps in focusing on reaching the desired objectives.
We suggest you go through the following data-driven objectives:
- Increase the website’s traffic (visits and visitors).
- Increase time spent on site.
- Reduce bounce rate.
- Increase the number of new leads.
- Increase the average order value.
- Increase the number of subscribers.
But keep in mind that many of these influence each other. For example, if your website’s traffic increases, but the bounce rate is still high, the conversion rate won’t improve.
iii) Find out what’s working and what can be improved
Why should you analyze your old website?
One of the most significant advantages of doing an audit is that it can give you an overview and insight into what’s working well on your site. Begin with a bird’s eye view and analyze the current design from different angles. What works, what doesn’t? What are you happy with?
First of all, assess its usability, accessibility, responsiveness, and performance. Then you can move on to a deeper one (high-level analysis) using different tools:
- Google Analytics
- Google Search Console
- Heat Maps
- User Interviews
- Usability Testing
With Google Analytics and Search Console, you can study traffic patterns. And analyze the key metrics like: Number of visitors, Bounce rate, Time on site and so on… The significance and relevance of each will vary based on your website redesign goals. But it’s a smart decision to document and analyze each metric before you begin.
iv) Launch the website redesign process with the UX design team.
As with any project, you need a timeline. A timeline can help you and your team see the project as a whole. Which pages and elements they need to work on first, and what the deadlines are for each phase.
This way you help them be more efficient with their work and the project. It’s also possible to redesign your website with the help of a professional agency
v) Ideate the solutions and create a user journey.
Sit down with your team and ideate the solutions to the problematic areas you listed previously. Remember, the solutions should add up in a comprehensive way to provide a consistent user experience. For this purpose, you should create a user journey.
A User Journey is a step-by-step process through which the user achieves a specific goal. Creating a user journey can help you start thinking about how people interact with a website, and what experiences it should provide. It’s perfectly fine to start with simple flows that contribute to your final objective. You can always come back and refine the map when you’re in an advanced stage of the redesign.
vi) Look for inspiration and directions.
If you’re revamping your website from scratch, you probably look for inspiration and directions. Before jumping into designing the new User Interface, it’s recommended to create mood boards. It helps you settle the new visual style of your website.
vii) Create interactive prototypes.
Once you’ve decided on the design style, you’re ready to start working on the UI. This stage of the website redesign process is especially meaningful. It establishes the base of your work for the upcoming months. Make sure that you create interactive prototypes.
You should be able to navigate around as if it were the finished design. This way you can test the website, and also explain to developers how things will work.
viii) Test the usability of the final design.
Even if the design looks perfect, it might not be perfect for the users. It’s like when trying to study from someone else’s notes. Everything is clear to you, as you’ve been involved in the design process.
However, someone visiting the new website for the first time may not make the same decisions you did. In such cases, testing comes handy. With testing, you can make sure that the final design helps your users with their needs. And that the flows are intuitive to use. We recommend usability testing.
ix) Hand over the design and start development.
Once everything is finalized, the next step is to export all the design elements. This should include all assets like fonts, colors, and logos along with the prototype and CSS codes.
Hand over all the necessary redesign assets to your developers.
By providing every necessary resource, you ensure that the developers’ on the one hand understand all the functionalities you want to implement. On the other hand, their work will go smoothly and efficiently. Following this strategy will also speed up the whole website redesign process.
x) Launch your new website.
Congrats! You reached the end of the website redesign project. It’s not a small task to rebuild an entire site. The last step is to launch it.
This will make your website unavailable for a little while. That’s why it’s a smart move to schedule the launch for nighttime when your site has the least amount of traffic. Once the website is live, make sure everything works correctly. This includes manually checking the website on various devices.
Also, ensure no broken links, dummy content, broken image tags, or redirect chains remain.
Wrapping it all up,
A website redesign project might be a long process with a need for consent optimization and improvement, but it sure does pay off. Now that you know how the comprehensive process works and got the tips, it is time to get to work.
Hope you nail it!
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