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Revamping Your Website? Here’s How to Do it Effectively
Do you have a website for your business that has been slowing down in terms of attracting visitors or achieving sales? Do you sometimes open your website, and something just doesn’t feel right? Maybe it no longer reflects the current state of your brand or business. These are just some of the signs that prove that you may be in need of a website redesign. Your website is the first impression they get of your brand to a customer and trust us: first impressions do matter. Your customers should recognize what you’re all about within seconds of landing on your site, and they should be able to navigate it with ease. If that’s not the case, here’s your guide on how to effectively revamp your website.
What Is a Website Revamp?
Wondering what it means to do a website revamp or redesign? A website redesign is a process that involves updating at least a few of the following; UX design, branding changes, social media elements, audience targeting, and much more. It’s basically a complete change in the coding and presentation of a website. It differs from a typical website refresh that usually leaves the core and functionality and only applies minor changes to things like SEO, content, logos, design, etc.
Why Is It Important?
So why should you spring for a website redesign, you ask? Well, there are many benefits to this process that’ll make an effort worthwhile. It can improve your online reach, user experience, and drive more conversion rates.
It doesn’t stop there, making your website more visually appealing will improve customer connections and increase your sales. A redesign can do wonders when it comes to search engine rankings. It’s also a great way to stay updated on new technology and keep up with competitors.
How To Do It Right
1. Pre-Game Prep
This is not the kind of process where you can just follow a ‘go with the flow’ approach. It needs thorough strategizing and planning that involves a lot of research.
You need to ask yourself what you are hoping to gain from this redesign and which areas in the site you want to focus on enhancing. This means you’ll need to be digging around all corners of your site to assess its current state. Here’s how to properly prep for a redesign:
Measure and Document Current Performance
This is something you need to do while strategizing a redesign, even before the planning part. It’ll help you determine where you stand when it comes to identifying the metrics you need to improve.
Focus on analyzing the monthly number of visitors; sales generated, bounce rate, top-ranking keywords, and pages with the most traffic. This will not only help you identify weak points but also your strengths that you’ll want to maintain throughout the new design.
Identify Your Audience
No matter what your reasons are for a website revamp, you should always keep your audience and customer base in mind throughout the process. Your website may be about your own brand and business, but it’s not for you.
Getting to understand your audience and what they respond to will help you create a website that appeals to them. You can use online tools to know more about your frequent visitors and think about who the ideal audience would be that it would be more likely to drive calls to action.
2. Update Content
It’s true. Content is king, always has been and always will be. Your website’s content is what reflects your brand’s persona and is a crucial factor in driving sales. Look to update the content of your main landing pages.
If you don’t already have a blog, then put it down in your redesigning plan because being a source of information to your audience is important for building trust.
If your website assessment shows you that image and video content does better with your audience, work on improving it and adding eye-catching designs and visual elements.
3. SEO Optimization
What’s the point of a whole new website if no one can find it? Search Engine Optimization should be one of the main focuses in your redesign, especially if you’re having trouble with online reach. The gurus over at Bundle Digital say that every redesign needs to take SEO into account, and you can check out their website to find out how your website can become a polished, top-ranking search result.
SEO is a league on its own that not everyone can master, so you might need professional help from a third party with more in-depth knowledge and experience. It’s better than being side-tracked with the endless SEO enhancing possibilities and instead only focus on the ones you need the most.
4. Navigation
The main point of revamping your website is not just to make it look better but also easier to use. Having great visuals and content amounts to nothing without accessibility. Make things smoother so your visitors can find what they’re looking for because otherwise, most people won’t have the patience to stay on the site.
If that means making your homepage slightly longer, that’s completely fine, and if it means more white space to enhance readability and highlight content, then so be it. The key is to experiment and continuously test to measure accessibility and overall success.
5. Make It Mobile- Friendly
You probably know this already, but most visitors use their smartphones to access and browse websites. People are now on their phones 24/7, and you should adjust your site accordingly if you want to attract them and drive up sales.
Content and pages shouldn’t be lagging on mobile devices, and visitors shouldn’t have to zoom in and out to view it.
Adding a responsive design and accelerated mobile pages to your list of redesigning tasks will go a long way with reach and sales.
Ultimately, this process depends on your vision and how well you plan to actualize it. Revamping differs from one site to another, so while it’s important to research competitors, don’t get sucked into comparisons. This could make you lose sight of your own goals and brand authenticity. Sure, the goal is to change and enhance everything, but don’t forget to stay true to your original brand identity and the message that you started out with, which earned you your current progress.