Thinking about giving your website an upgrade? Keeping your website fresh and modern is essential for engaging customer interest. An up-to-date website signals an active business that is on board with the latest trends.
A website redesign can sometimes be tougher than creating from scratch however. There are tough decisions to be made; mixing the components that are already working well with new elements can be a tricky balance.
Consider the following key points when planning a major overhaul.
Re-identify your target audience. Chances are your business has changed significantly since you developed your previous website. Perhaps you have discovered your niche, or conversely have opened up new audiences and avenues of business. A website redesign is an excellent time to reconnect with your intended audience and decide what content is the most important on your website going forward.
Review your content and goals. Similarly, you may now want your website to do different things. Would a blog add to the customer experience and boost SEO? Are there new products or ways of making purchases you could include on your website? Should you add more video? Analyse the way you want users to interact with your site. Creating outstanding content is the key to getting a website firing on all cylinders.
Keep the essence similar. If it’s too strange and new, you may risk alienating existing clients with a complete website overhaul. You don’t want to make them feel like they’re dealing with an entirely new company. To ensure the design flow, you may want to keep some of the old elements such as the colour, logo or overall page structure and rejuvenate and refresh them instead.
Keep SEO in mind. This is the number one mistake we most often see. A website redesign can profoundly affect search engine rankings due to the restructuring of the site. If possible keep the page URLs the same and use 301 redirects for any page URLs that have to change. Review what pages are popular and important on the old site and make sure these pages exist in the new site.
The hardest part about deploying an effective website redesign is often judging the balance between old and new. It’s useful to consider combining your site rebuild with a business plan review and then ensure there’s a strong relationship between the two.