Encourage newsletter subscriptions? Raise awareness to new products or deals? For each of your goals, specify the metrics through which it can be tracked. These clearly defined goals will help you devise a website redesign plan. After doing so, break down each of the desired changes you envision for your website into concrete, actionable steps. For example, if your main goal is to increase sales, you might want to consider incorporating pop-up lightboxes that offer a special discount.
Then, decide on a viable timeframe for all of the items on your list. By making your team an integral part of the website redesign process, the new website design will benefit from their expertise and experience. Deciding on the look-and-feel of your website is an important step before delving into the many details that go into it. To get your ideas flowing, we recommend you look into sources of web design inspiration and the latest web design trends.
These include your professional logo , brand colors and website color scheme. Ask yourself whether they still fit into your new style, or could use some adjusting. A sitemap is a list of all the pages on your website and the way they are connected to each other.
On a piece of paper, map out a tree of the different pages on your website, and how users will be able to get from one to the other. Keep in mind important website navigation practices, such as linking your logo to the homepage.
Another thing to consider is that in as little as one or two clicks, site visitors should be able to get to any page on your site, from whichever page they are presently on. As for the pages themselves, include all of the absolute must-haves, such as a welcoming homepage, an About page , and a contact section, as well as a services or products page. In addition, consider which other pages can add value to your site, such as an online store, a blog, or designated landing pages to encourage conversion.
Wireframes: For a truly professional approach, take your sitemap a step further by sketching out wireframes of your pages. This is where the design part of the website redesign comes in. Be sure to keep your brand identity in mind, as well as the main principles of design. Remember that these services must be installed and running for at least 30 days before they can gather the data you need.
Therefore you need to start with this type of analytics as soon as you can so that you can gain insights about what sort of updates will benefit your website. Most likely you are not considering a website redesign versus website update simply for the hell of it.
You are doing this because you need a business website that works for your business, not against it. And that means a key consideration here are the expectations of your intended target audience. After all, you are updating or redesigning your website for them, not you! The first step is to find how visitors are accessing your site.
That depends on a lot of factors, including age, location, intent, and personal preferences. Once you know if your visitors are surfing on their iPad or researching at the office you must find out what they do once they are on your site. Here are some more tips for conducting user experience research.
The most important thing to consider is how many people are using desktops or laptops and how many are using smartphones and other mobile devices. They are simply a tool for viewing your website. A better approach is to decide which devices drive the most revenue to your site.
On the other hand, if your business targets mainly Millenials you obviously need to offer an awesome mobile experience. We always recommend you look at these things holistically and figure out the characteristics of your most valuable demographics. There you have it, five simple questions to help decide on a website redesign versus website update. As you can see there is a big difference between a website redesign versus website update. A website redesign is a complex undertaking that you should only consider if your current website has significant shortcomings.
If your business website has not had a refresh in three or more years you are most likely due for a redesign. Website updates, however, are far less complex. We actually recommend updating your website at least once a week with some fresh content as part of an ongoing content marketing strategy.
You can schedule more extensive updates, such as replacing images in galleries and slide shows about two to four times a year. Plan on a website update as part of regular website maintenance at least two to four times a year depending on your business or service. Consider a website update like spring cleaning for your website. Open the windows for fresh air, sweep out the cobwebs, and put some fresh flowers on the table.
Website updates usually take a few days, and the business owner can do much of this with minimal help from a web designer. This makes a simple update much more cost and time-effective than a complete website redesign. On the other hand, if your current website is not mobile-friendly or does not meet most of your business goals you are better off with a website redesign.
We actually recommend that you redesign your business website every 2 — 5 years depending on your business and industry. A website redesign usually requires the services of a professional web designer or agency and can take 4 to 8 weeks or longer depending on your website and requirements. Since you are going to make significant changes you may want to consider adding content strategy or copywriting , new product or location images , search engine optimization and social media marketing to your project.
It may also be time to evaluate your current content management system and website hosting to decide if you need to make changes. Open up your search for inspiration to alternative resources, such as design museums or graphic design magazines.
However, try not to get carried away with changing too many details. Research shows that when it comes to web design, first impressions matter. A good place to start is by checking whether your website is in line with the core principles of design. In addition, integrating striking visual elements into your site will help create a memorable design that will set you apart from your competition and instantly engage your audience.
Consider how you can update, edit or add new media features to your website, including everything from videos, to sound, images, animations and more.
Instead, look through your website to see if there are any existing images that could do with a little sprucing up. Play around with tools like Wix Photo Studio to edit your images. You can also browse this free library of high-quality photos to be used for your needs, or explore this fun and versatile Vector Art collection. If you want to add a dynamic feel to your website, transform your videos or still images into professional promotional videos with an online video editor.
Add text, music and special effects to create engaging content that will draw in your audience. However, as a website owner, you should be keeping your eyes open to ensure you stay sharp and relevant. Another way of staying updated is by reading magazines and blog posts on web design trends. That is why there needs to be a rigorous QA quality assurance process in place to test, test and retest the test website across all the major browsers and device widths.
Congratulations you have a new site! But how do you go about editing and updating the darn thing? That is where training comes in. You want to make sure you have a thorough understanding of how the backend of the website works and how you can go about making the most common types of edits you would make.
Our system is to shoot about little screencast videos on all the major aspects of the website backend. When they first invented the airplane and were testing it for military use, they found that there were too many crashes to find airplanes reliable as a military machine. Something like 1 in 5 flights ended up failing due to some type of human error. While launching a website might not be quite as complex as flying a plane, there are enough variables to warrant a thorough checklist with each launch.
Your domain registrar and hosting environment are two separate entities that work together to support your website displaying on the web.
With a website redesign, you will have both already in place. And you will need to have a clear understanding of your current hosting setup. Will it remain the same or if you will be pointing to a new environment? You will also want to make sure that you share the proper credentials with whoever is launching your new site. Email hosting is a separate entity than your website hosting. If you are launching your website on a new hosting environment, you want to make sure you do not mess up your existing email hosting records in the process.
If you are changing the actual Nameservers, you will be impacting the existing email setup and you will need a technical person to help you make sure that the MX records of the new host match the existing MX records. If you are keeping your current hosting environment, then you will probably want to backup your previous website by moving it to an archive folder, e.
The trick with this is you want to make sure to have your developer de-index this folder so that Google can no longer crawl it or display its pages in the search results. If you are using a new hosting environment, then you can backup the previous site in a zipped folder and save it to your computer for safekeeping. This is something you can do on the test site pre-launch. If you have a WordPress website, pay close attention.
But as soon as it launches, you want to make sure to undo this function. Just as the name would suggest, a website redesign is a process of redesigning your website.
But the truth is, not all website redesigns are the same. Sometimes, you literally are just slightly updating the design. For example, you might have a WordPress website that is a couple of years old, and you might want to adjust the fonts, colors, and imagery of the site.
In this example, you might keep the exact same WordPress theme and just be updating the CSS and images within the same theme. In other cases, you might be transferring from one content management system to another. For example, you might have an old Joomla website and want to switch over to a new WordPress website.
In that case, the entire website will probably be new. Including not only the design but the very URL structure of all the pages on the site. Well, your website is really your business on the web.
It is your virtual salesman to the greater world. As the saying goes, you never get a second chance to make a first impression. And your website is the first meeting point for many of your potential customers. The flip side of that is that your old or ugly website might be costing you money. I find that most redesign projects are driven by new people in the company who have fresh eyes to better recognize the issues and limitations with the current website.
These issues can include technical limitations, such as a lack of mobile responsive design. Or aesthetic issues such as the current site is plain old ugly and was never designed properly, to begin with.
There is some flexibility depending on the industry. I find that particularly in the technology or SaaS industry the time is much shorter, in the year range. While other more conservative industries such as construction or financial services tend to stretch their redesigns to the year mark.
If the question is how often should you get a website, the answer is always the same. The question simply is, would your business be better served right now with a better website.
Following our Web Design Process listed above is a good place to start. That will greatly inform your strategy for the rest of the project.
The truth is there is a website solution available for any budget you have you just need to get clear on what your budget is first.
A lot of times I will have people ask me to give them a quote for their project without giving me enough information to give them one. Here are the main things I need to know before I can give a quote to a prospect. Then it will return the number of pages indexed, which is technically the page count on your website.
Just have a clear idea of the pages required. A page template is a page that is unique and different in design from other pages on the front-end and has a unique development interface on the backend. You can learn more about website page templates here but the main idea is the more unique pages, the bigger the budget. So just make sure you know what you want before you talk to a web design company.
You also want to list out any unique functionality you might need with the new site. This can include anything from an interactive map, a unique form integration, a password-protected membership area or integration to Salesforce or Marketo. When I ask people to list other websites they like the look and feel of, they invariably just send me a list of their competition. Why not research the best websites on the web? Check out the top technology companies , luxury brands, design award winners.
A good idea is to create a private Pinterest pinboard and pin other websites you like for inspiration. The key to analyzing a website is taking it apart and looking at the smallest elements. Check out the fonts, the buttons, the iconography, the spacing, the headings. Then when you talk to a designer you have many elements you can point to as a jumping-off point for the design. When it comes to researching other companies, my advice is to judge them mostly on their results. If you want to avoid disaster, be sure to delegate a champion for the website project.
Someone who will take ownership of the deliverables from the client-side and will be the voice of feedback and final decision-maker in the project. I was teaching my young son the game of Chess recently and was trying to explain to him the concept of strategy. To keep it simple I told him that strategy is the steps to the goal you want to accomplish. Your redesign strategy is really just a series of steps to the goal of having your new website design completed.
Next you need to hire someone to work with.
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