Looking for website redesign checklist?
Many websites require a facelift from time to time due to changes in branding, services or products, platform, ownership, etc. And the website often undergoes multiple significant changes; called website redesign. Careful implementation is necessary to make the most of an uplifting redesign.
What is Website Redesign?
It’s more like a maintenance process of an existing website in terms of aesthetics, functionality, contents. Redesign is different from refresh as the latter refers to changes limited to onscreen visuals or graphics.
Website redesigning is a lengthy technical readjustment, requiring months to plan, implement, launch. Time, Expertise, Budget – the extent of every requirement depends on the changes planned/specified.
Some common facts are directly involved in deciding the website redesigning efficiency. These are termed as the checklists to keep in mind. The must-follow checklists for site redesigns are the following ones.
Understand Your Audience
A staggering $37B in advertising waste turns up every year; just because the ads can engage with the right audience. It’s a must to identify the potential customers/visitors/users of your products and/or services.
Tailoring your website based on consumer demands will meet the expectations, increasing total views. A redesigned site to value audience likes and dislikes can ease navigation while gaining more attention.
So, it becomes crucial to conduct research on potential audiences. You can adopt distinctive approaches, like – online/offline surveys, questionnaires, interviews, data analysis, social media research, and others.
Competitive Analysis
A healthy, insightful, focused comparison with similar websites can help you figure out what you can do better. Taking inspiration from competitors can help you brainstorm new ideas about website structure.
You can check out the website layouts, marketing strategies, customer feedback to identify your stand. There are always spaces to imply improvements for existing features to impress your target audience.
Don’t forget to find out ongoing trends as well as future forecasts related to your business or initiatives. Integrating such features while redesigning a website can put you well ahead in the competitive market.
Planning and Budget
Why you’re thinking of redesigning the website at the moment? Finding out a reasonable answer to this must-consider question is mandatory. Whether it’s sales, branding, subscriptions, and/or ranking – you must set goals and identify their key metrics.
A well-specified plan is also a prerequisite to making the best of your redesign actions. Breaking down all the desired changes into separate/individual segments helps implementation. Come up with a proper order and timeframe to accomplish the steps.
Satisfactory website redesigning is mostly a technical, complicated, laborious process. Hiring an expert costs more against benefits like superior SEO, custom coding, intricate design. You can go for DIY when redesigning is comparatively straightforward.
Content Strategy
An essential segment of upgrading the website concerns regular content updates. It’s not necessary to update every content all the time. Instead, you should prioritize the content doing well with viewers.
Always keep the target audience in mind while uploading and/or updating content. The tone, intent, elements must remain informative, trustworthy, friendly while motivating the users to your writings.
Track down all your high-performing content as well as those of your competitors. Identify what makes them special. Maintain consistency with the updated info/stats while keeping things short and simple.
Site Structure and Navigation
Website structure is the foundation to let all other features function as expected and/or assigned. It’s crucial to plan, develop, test, launch a well-organized structure, featuring a perfect order of all contents.
Setting a sitemap is the ultimate strategy here since it lists all the webpages as well as their connections. Check out the best navigation practices to put important pages closer while making up the website tree.
Establishing a clear hierarchy of content, pages, links while adding or removing elements during redesign. Conduct a detailed keyword search to update your titles, meta, descriptions to get ahead in SEO ranks.
Design and User Experience (UX)
You’re to redesign a website when the design isn’t friendly or needs an upgrade. Whatever the situation is, optimizing UX has been a key feature of popular websites. The site must facilitate visually engaging, easily navigable, preferably aligned all the time.
UX research to develop an in-depth understanding of user demands, expectations, requirements is a must. Focus on the wireframe to craft a logical, catchy, intuitive flow of website elements to guide your audiences. Don’t miss out on the overall aesthetics upon implementing all the changes.
The website design should corroborate the services and products you’re about to offer. The colors, images, fonts must resonate with the customers with a slight touch of creativity. Always stay tuned for the latest trends in UX design and make some alterations if possible.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
No matter what your plan is, SEO is involved in almost all aspects of website maintenance, including redesign. Redesigning your website should give a reasonable push in the SEO rank in search engines.
Check up with the backlink (link of your webpage at other websites) catalog to asses contribution. Try to stick with the same link for the same content to maintain authority; utilize 301 Redirects for changes.
Always keep detailed track of backlinks as well as the list of 301 Redirects for future troubleshooting. Look into the top redesign trends, elements, tools to exceed or at least meet the desired SEO ranking.
Device Accessibility
It’s important to ensure a consistently smooth functioning of the website on all kinds of screens equally. Your customer can browse webpages from mobiles, desktops/laptops, tablets of varying configurations.
All the website contents must remain equally responsive to adapt screen sizes, smaller to larger ones. Optimizing the image/video/audio quality and response, especially for mobiles, must be prioritized.
Always test the redesigned website with a few customers/users for feedback before final launching. Anything out of lines should come to light for fixation, letting you avoid potentially damaging errors.
Wrapping Up
Having a website surely means something for your business. However, keeping up the website with all the trends is the ultimate key. Investing in time, effort, money to update the online storefront is always worth the try. A perfectly redesigned site can push your SEO ranks while strengthening the clientele.
Contact Tectera a web design company in Sri Lanka to do website redesign.
