Hello! I’m Adam, a web designer at drumBEAT Marketing. We work with businesses to improve their online presence, and one of the major areas we focus on is website design and redesign. 

Today, I want to share insights on what to consider when you’re thinking about revamping your website.

Website Redesign: An Overview

A website redesign involves overhauling your site’s existing structure, including updating content, refreshing layouts and improving navigation to enhance conversions and site performance. It’s not a light task; it’s a comprehensive process that demands careful planning and execution.

Why Redesign Your Website? 

There can be many reasons why you might want to redesign your website. It could be that a few years have passed and the site looks outdated, or you may want to switch up the look and feel of the site in order to promote new products or services. In any case, it’s important to recognise when changes are necessary

Goal of a Website Redesign

The ultimate objective of a website redesign is to craft a site that targets your desired audience, elevates user experience (UX) and encourages conversions. 

An effective redesign should boost your website’s online presence, reduce the frequency of users leaving immediately after arriving and align your site’s objectives with those of your business. 

A good redesign should enable the site to be expanded at a later date without the need to have parts re-designed, a well-thought-out design with future goals in mind can be built into the design to be then accessed as needed.

Target Audience: The End User

In redesigning a website, the end-user is the primary focus. Your website should cater to your target audience’s needs, providing them with a seamless, user-friendly and engaging experience. 

Remember, 75% of consumers judge a company’s credibility based on the company’s web design.

Conduct Research Before Redesigning Your Website

Before you get started, it’s important to conduct research. This involves studying your current website, understanding how visitors interact with the site and analysing any performance data available. 

By evaluating these elements and developing a deep understanding of who best benefits from your site, you can better plan for an effective website redesign.

Deadline and Project Owner

When a website is going to be redesigned, there is usually a set amount of time for the project to be completed. 

The person in charge of the project could be someone working for the company, someone outside the company, or a mix of both. Having a specific timeline and person in charge helps everyone involved be responsible and work as efficiently as possible.

To plan for your website redesign, consider all relevant factors after completing the basics.

The 7 Major Steps to Designing a Website

Website redesign involves several steps, which can be broken down into three main stages: planning, design, and implementation.

1. Strategy Development: Before you begin, it’s crucial to have a strategy. You should identify your target audience, set goals, and assess the current state of your website.
2. Analysis: Analyse your existing website to understand what works and what doesn’t. Keep a close eye on performance metrics like bounce rate and conversion rate.
3. Content Audit: Your content should be engaging and relevant to your audience. An audit helps you weed out outdated or irrelevant content and highlights areas for new, valuable content.
4. Design: The design phase involves creating the visual layout of your website. Key elements like color schemes, typography, and images are considered in this stage.
5. Development: Here, the design is translated into actual code. This stage involves building the website’s structure, features, and functionalities.
6. Testing: Once the site is developed, it’s tested for performance, security, and functionality. This step helps ensure that the site works optimally before going live. To test the usability of your website, ask a few people to navigate through it and make sure they can easily find the information they need. Also, ensure that the website is responsive and optimised for mobile use.
7. Launch: After thorough testing and any necessary adjustments, the website is made live for the audience. Once your redesigned website is launched, evaluate the user feedback and performance metrics to see if it has achieved its objectives.

Top 5 Factors of Website Design

When designing or redesigning a website, you need to focus on several factors. However, the top five include:

1. User Experience (UX): A great website design should provide a seamless, user-friendly experience.
2. Visual Appeal: The design should be aesthetically pleasing to keep visitors engaged. Remember, 46% of consumers base their decisions on the visual appeal of your website.
3. Content: The content should be engaging, relevant, and structured in a way that enhances readability.
4. Responsiveness: With more people using mobile devices, your website design needs to be responsive, adapting to any screen size seamlessly.
5. SEO: Your website design should be SEO-friendly to help increase its visibility on search engines.

Website Redesign and SEO

A critical factor to consider during a website redesign is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). 

An effective SEO strategy will make your website more visible to search engines, leading to increased organic traffic. However, a website redesign can potentially impact your existing SEO if not properly handled. Here are a few SEO considerations during a redesign:

1. 301 Redirects: When changing your website’s structure, some old pages may not exist on the new site. To avoid “404 not found” errors, which negatively impact user experience and SEO, set up 301 redirects from your old pages to relevant new ones.
2. Site Speed: Page loading time is a significant ranking factor for search engines. Ensure your redesigned website is optimised for speed.
3. Mobile-Friendly: More people are using mobile devices than ever, and search engines like Google prioritise mobile-friendly sites. Ensure your redesign includes a mobile-optimised version.
4. Meta data: Your pages’ meta titles and descriptions play a crucial role in SEO. Ensure all your new pages have unique and descriptive metadata.
5. Keyword Optimisation: As part of your content audit, check that your content is optimised for relevant keywords.

Redesigning your website can be a huge task, but if it’s done correctly it can bring a lot of benefits to your business. By upgrading the user experience, enhancing SEO and making sure your site lines up with your business goals, a website redesign can help you improve your online presence, bring in more customers and boost your business growth.

 It’s important to know that a website redesign isn’t just about looks—it’s about making a site that works well for your audience and helps you achieve your business goals.

I hope this guide will be helpful to you as you begin your website redesign process. If you require any assistance or have any inquiries about your redesign, please feel free to contact me: [email protected]