Consumers today want it all. Their relentless demand for a more satisfying online experience has forced many integrated marketers to reevaluate—and increasingly, overhaul—website look, feel and function. If such an website redesign is in your future, share these seven steps with your developer and creative team to simplify and streamline the process.
- Define your goals. Work with key stakeholders to create a list of relevant, actionable goals that clarify strategic reasons for a re-do. Good reasons can include: increasing site traffic; boosting conversions; and ranking higher for certain targeted keywords or phrases. Reasons to give you pause? “Our competitors are doing it,” or “I’m tired of the look.”
- Audit and secure your assets. A redesign is an opportunity to improve site performance. So it’s fine, even preferable, to jettison outdated or under-performing assets. Just make sure that proven content, high-ranking keywords, and quality inbound links don’t disappear in the process. Use a favorite spreadsheet to track and manage these items.
- Improve your homepage. Work with your developer to simplify design and navigation. Strive for faster page loads; re-optimize homepage content, page titles and description meta tags with recently added or updated keywords.
- Refine your content. Before initiating the redesign, identify content gaps and commission your creative services provider to help develop new assets, especially video and a blog. Consumers (and search engines) love video, and sites with blogs garner 55% more traffic, according to HubSpot. Add search-optimized news releases, case studies, and white papers to increase your new site’s value, authority, and searchability.
- Emphasize conversions. A conversion is any action you want readers to take, including downloading, purchasing, requesting, or subscribing. Conversion rates soar when bold, clear calls-to-action work harmoniously with landing pages to spur readers into action.
- Optimize for mobile
Mobile device usage continues to skyrocket. So many integrated marketers recommend Responsive Web Design for these benefits and others, such as how one site (not several) can accommodate all visitor types, including smartphone and tablet users. - Measure your results. To quantify the effectiveness of the redesign, track (at minimum) key metrics such as: visitors (who’s coming to your site and from where); leads (how many visitors became leads); and sales (among those converted, how many purchased).
