13 factors to consider before redesigning your website  [checklist]

 

There are many reasons why you could be considering redesigning your website. However, before you embark on this exciting journey with a professional website design company, you first need to establish what your reason is, as well as outline a clear plan of action with desired deliverables. 

We break down the top 10 factors as a checklist to guide you with your web design and marketing before getting started with your redesign. 

 

Why Should I Care About Redesigning My Website?

 

Your website is the first impression people will have of your brand and your product or service. Therefore, a good website will serve you well, and similarly, a bad one can damage your brand’s credibility. 

 

It’s important that you pinpoint why you’re unhappy with your current website design, if there’s anything you do like,  as well as where there’s room for improvement. 

 

Your Website Redesign Strategy Checklist 

 

When redesigning or building a website, you have to understand that there are risks. You need to ensure that you work with a website design company that has your best interests at heart and know what they’re doing.

 

Before blindly starting with the web redesign process, go through our checklist to give you a scope of what you need to keep in mind.

 

1. Who Are Your Intended Users?

 

Every decision you make when designing or redesigning a website is centred around who you want to visit your website. It’s a powerful lead-generation tool, so you, therefore, have to ensure that those specific users will find you, interact with your website, and finally take action. Whittle down exactly who your intended users are before you do anything else.

 

2. What’s Your Design Look-and-Feel? 

 

The visual impact your website layout design has on your intended user is very powerful. If your images are low-quality, formatting off, or your website is just poorly designed, the likelihood that users will leave your website is high. A high bounce rate also negatively affects your ranking on Google. 

 

Therefore, you want to get your brand colours, fonts, imagery, as well as a web page design mock-up done before you start building or redesigning anything. Side note: Always ensure that you have the legal rights to use all of the images on your site.

 

3. Have You Chosen Your Domain and Host?

 

Choosing a domain name (your website address) will affect how easily your customers find you on search engines. Choose something that clearly states what you do, is memorable,  and is easy to spell.

 

Whereas the hosting package is also vitally important as it will determine your monthly payment to the company hosting your domain. You also need to consider what kind of business and website you will have. Will you need tight security, technical support, etc.?

 

4. Have You Chosen the Right Content Management System (CMS) for Your Business?

 

Your CMS is very important when it comes to the look and feel, as well as the ongoing maintenance of your website. WordPress is one of the best CMS solutions out there.

 

5. What’s Your Site Map Going to Be?

 

You need to plan the ‘chapters’ or web pages of your ‘book’ or website before you can start with the redesign. Are you happy with your current amount of pages and how it’s navigated? Or would you like to add a dropdown menu, add an entirely new page? Create a clear map of how many pages you want and where they will go on the website. 

 

6. Do You Have to Revise Your Current Content?

 

Take a long, hard look at your website content. Did you get a professional content writer to write it? Is it effectively communicating what you offer and in line with your business values? If not, you should seriously consider a rewrite.

 

7. Have You Considered Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Implementation?

 

When planning your content, you need to have considered how this will affect your SEO strategy after the website is live. You must ensure that you have specific industry keywords and search phrases woven into your content to help you rank on search engines.

 

8. Did You Keep Mobile Website Design in Mind?

 

These days, users are using their phones more than any other device. So why then won’t you create the best experience for them on mobile? Ensure that you keep responsive web design in mind so that it displays well on all screens. 

 

9. Are You Prompting Users to Take Action?

 

Call to Actions (or CTAs) should be prominent throughout your site. Why? Because they prompt users to act. Whether it’s to download your free eBook, sign up for your newsletter, buy something, or contact you about a product or service.

 

10. What is the User Experience (UX) Like?

 

When your intended user lands on your site, what will they see first, where will they go, will it be easy to find what they’re looking for? Get a couple of people to run through your site to test how user-friendly it is. 

 

11. What is Your Website Loading Time Like?

 

A website that is slow to load will cost you customers, as well as negatively affect your SEO ranking. In other words, people won’t find you, or if they do, they will leave your website because they won’t wait for it to load. You can continually test your site’s speed online. 

 

12. Don’t Forget the Power of Social Proof 

 

Users want some kind of reassurance that you really do know what you’re doing. And social proof is the most powerful way to do that. Always add testimonials, reviews, use cases, and anything that will re-establish your expertise.

 

13. Blog Strategy Going Forward 

 

A blog strategy is one of the most effective ways to rank on search engines. By consistently uploading fresh content, you keep your website relevant and considered ‘quality’.

 

14. Do you have a performance advertising strategy in place?

 

If you’re planning on driving traffic to your website with any kind of digital advertising, you have to consider the content and structure of your new website design. It will need to match the intent of the type of traffic you’re expecting to bring in. For example, people may behave different when they come in from Google Ads compared to social ads. So has your website redesign plan accounted for the different behaviours?

 

Contact a Professional Web Design Company

 

If you’re considering a website redesign or a simple update and refresh, contact us to get obligation free advice. The right direction from an experienced web design agency can save you a lot of unnecessary time and effort planning for your project and lead you to your ideal website.