Credit: Waterflame Institute

Website redesigning is required in case you have undertaken a complete change in the product offerings or there is a change in the vision/mission of the company. A website redesign may also be required if you are getting customer / team-member feedback for updating it.

You may also consider redesigning if you feel that the current website is not scalable as per your business. Or, the website is not looking at par with the recent technological/ designing avenues.

Either way, there have to be certain pointers that can help you in getting that perfect design strategy. In this article, we will try to cover aspects, which are essential for acing your website redesigning.

Key Factors to Keep in Mind For a Website Redesign Strategy:

1. Analysis of the Current Performance: Planning on the re-designing of the website will require a strong base for the major areas that require improvement. You must have a detailed analysis of the key performance indicators (KPI) of the running website.

KPIs vary from industry to industry. However, a few of the common metrics are:

• Number of Engagements that the website can garner.
• Clicks to Sales Conversion Ratio.
• Best performing brands/ products and the list of non-performing brands/ products currently on your website.
• Average Retention Rate and the Average Bounce Rate.
• Analysis of the Sites, which the people are bouncing upon from your site and so on.

These KPIs will work as a base upon which your website redesigning team can focus. It will help you focus on those areas, which require correction and support.

2. Meets the Current Interests: Once you are undergoing a website redesign, make sure that it is meeting all the interests of your near future. Website redesigning exercises are not undertaken frequently, as it disrupts the entire chain of operations.

A few of the general pointers that you can keep in mind are:

• Assuring that the planned website syncs perfectly with changes in the logo designing or product designing by the company.
• The branding message is intact and is depicted in the “About Us” section.
• There are no major deviations in the existing ratings and reviews of your products. Except for those, which are occurring organically in the transition period.
• All the previous search engine optimizations (SEO) and other marketing campaigns are working perfectly with the updated website.

These pointers if kept in mind will help you in getting that perfectly designed website which you are planning for.

3. Keeping the Optimizations Intact: Very often it is the problem of the company that whenever the company undergoes a website change, it’s search engine rankings go down. This happens primarily because the changes, which you conducted, were not in line with the SEO and SEM (Search Engine Marketing) guidelines. Or, there are problems with the backlinks which were created for the previous versions of the website.

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Two major actions can be taken to avoid such a scenario:

• Saving the existing high SEO pages as documents or backups in your cloud. This will help in rebooting the new page as per the new design but without any optimization loss.
• Redirecting links to be added in case of malfunctioning backlinks. The benefit here will be that whenever the backlink will direct the audience to your old webpage, redirecting links will land the audience onto your new webpage. In this way, you can at least save some clicks from getting wasted, in the short run.

These are however temporary solutions and cannot be continued for a long time. You must consult with the tech team and update your optimizations at the earliest.

4. Competitor Analysis: Sometimes, an analysis of the competitors gives you insights that are much more practical than those given by the core web developers team. Competition analysis gives you the chance to examine what are the elements of web design that are drawing the audience’s attention.

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Various tools in the market analyze a website from root to show. Using these tools you can easily analyze the pros of your competitor’s website. These can become part of the basis upon which the designing team can work. It will give them clarity of the direction in which they are required to work.

5. Choice of Software: Websites require what is known as CMS or Content Management Systems. These are of two types. Open Sourced CMS and a Closed CMS. Open-source CMS allows for multiple customization options at affordable costs. A closed CMS is more secured and scalable, although it comes with a premium price.

The choice of software completely depends on your internal fundamentals. If you are a small and growing team then open-sourced CMS is the better option. However, if you have a team of experienced web developers and good designing partners then, you can opt for a close-sourced CRM.

6. Beta Testing: Before launching a re-designed website, beta testing is necessary. The testing should be phased in parts. At first, it can be tested within the employees of the company. Feedback should be made transparent. Constructive feedback should be incorporated into the main designs of the website.

Credit: Avira

After a positive response from the internal team, phased public launches can be executed. The scale should be gradually increased to cover all the targeted audiences. This type of phased approach helps in working upon the feedback of the audience, which further improves the scope of design acceptance.

7. Monitoring of Performances: After the launch of the re-designed website, you must keep an eye on the KPI. The results of the currently designed website should be matched with that of the previous readings. You must consider the time factor as well. Readings should be conducted at least after a month of the launch. This would give you a more accurate insight into the performance of the revamped website. As of now, all the optimizations would have taken their positions and performed optimally.

How Often Re-Designing is Required.

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There is not any fixed guideline as to when you should consider re-designing your website. However, as per research the lifespan of a website usually lasts for a maximum of 3 years without any changes. If you are tweaking your website for small optimizations, the inherent design can last for more than 1-2 years.

But, the website redesign process depends primarily on factors like:

• Major Changes in the Vision/ Mission of the company.
• Responsiveness of the Website as per fastest data speeds.
• Relevancy as per the changing industry dynamics.
• Adaptability as per the latest products/ offerings.
• Building a new or revamped brand identity.
• Ascertaining dominance in the market, and so on.

In-House or Outsourcing?

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After that, you have finally decided to revamp your website, the question comes whether to outsource or build in-house. This depends on the team you have currently and the expertise that you require. Website Redesign Services Agencies have traditionally outperformed the expectations of marketers. The website redesign tips and the website redesign benefits, which these agencies provide in the set budget, are incomparable.

In general, if you require a wider prospect in designing backed with experienced professionals, outsourcing can be a good option. However, if you feel that your in-house design team is well versed and experienced, then internal re-designing is a good option.

Conclusion

Website redesigning is a complicated and time-consuming task. You have to look at various factors before finalizing anything. However, it is an exercise that is necessary to conduct to stay competitive in the market. We hope that you have gained a thoughtful insight as to why website redesign is important for the business.