A website redesign is the perfect time to discover ways to improve your current systems, processes, and customer journey. A new website can bring a world of possibility, but that possibility can also feel overwhelming. Before you start looking for someone to assist with your website redesign, there are some things you need to ask.
What is the Purpose of Your Website?
Businesses change, but for many 2020 was a year of enormous change. Your website may have been built to be purely informational when you realized you needed to offer online ordering, scheduling, or virtual appointments. While speed was of the essence when adding these to your website, it’s a good idea to revisit them during your website redesign. You may find that there are different tools, integrations, or ways to implement these features that improve the performance of your website or help enhance the customer experience.
Why are You Considering a New Website?
There are a variety of reasons small businesses choose to redesign their websites. Keeping your content fresh and modern is always a good idea, but like considering the purpose, considering your “why” is important to a successful project. Reasons businesses and other website owners decide to redesign their website include updated aesthetics, rebranding, improving the user experience, or adding a new service or product. Website redesigns can mean wiping the slate clean and starting over with new content, new technology, new everything, or it can be as simple as re-evaluating and refreshing the look or language on your current website. Your “why” should tell you which one is right for you.
Who Will Use Your Website?
This is actually a two-fold question. You need to ask who is your audience as well as who will manage your new website. Your audience should guide the feel and features of a newly redesigned website. You want to make sure the look matches your industry and positions your business in a positive light or you’ll find your conversion rate to be low. For example, if you’re selling a product or service worth thousands, you want a clean, modern look which will help to convey trust and authority, instead of something outdated and cluttered. Looking internally, consider who will be responsible for updating your website. If you don’t have an on-staff developer, it’ll be important to choose an easy-to-learn website platform or an option where you can hire an affordable developer, like WordPress.
How Will You Know the New Website is Successful?
Your metrics may vary, but it’s important to decide upfront how you will determine if your newly redesigned website is successful. This ensures you communicate any analytics or tracking needs to your website developer.
Where Do Most of Your Website Visitors Come From?
This is one of the most important questions you can ask before you start a website redesign. If you don’t have data about your site users, it’s important you sign up for Google Analytics immediately. Within the last few years, more internet traffic has been on a mobile device, rather than a desktop, however, this varies greatly by website. For some industries, especially B2B websites, traffic is still primarily on a desktop machine. For others, especially businesses that rely on Facebook or Instagram ads, traffic is likely to be almost entirely mobile. The device your audience is most often using to access your website should drive the web design decisions you make.
Redesigning a website can offer new life and functionality to your business. Check out the website design and development services we offer or take a look at a few of the web design projects we’ve helped bring to life for our clients.
