If you’re wondering how to approach a website redesign, it means your brand is growing. You may need to redesign to give your website a facelift. It could also help to adapt your site to changes in your marketing strategy or brand and product modifications.
You may also desire a website revamp if you initially:
- Didn’t have your branding elements well figured out.
- Made mistakes in design.
- Suffered ineffective content placement.
In any case, planning a website redesign is important to ensure success and get the expected results. The devil is in the details, which heavily influences the website redesign. Here’s a comprehensive guide that’ll help you tackle the redesign project from start to finish.
Preparing for a Website Redesign
Some projects are just too significant to undertake without having a plan. A website redesign is one of them, as it affects the website’s user experience, search engine performance, and overall branding.
It also takes significant time, skills, and capital to execute, so you have to understand and prepare for the must-dos before attempting a redesign.
1. Analyze the Current Website
The first step toward any website redesign is to evaluate your current website. You must ask yourself if it meets your business objectives and how much your brand has evolved since the last website update.
An in-depth brand vs. website audit can help you uncover any strengths, weaknesses, or areas of improvement that need to be addressed.
2. Define Goals and Objectives
Once you’ve analyzed the current website, it’s time to establish clear goals and objectives for the redesign. Knowing why you’re doing this will help ensure the new website meets your business needs.
Additionally, setting measurable goals and expectations for the project will help you track progress.
3. Research Market and Audience
You’ll need to research your market (the competitors) and audience to understand what works in the industry and what they expect from your website. Analyzing competitor websites can inspire design elements that work well (or don’t).
Gather insights by including surveys, interviews, and analytics data to gain more insights about your target audience preferences and expectations. Doing this helps you prioritize features and design elements during the redesign process.
Planning the Website Redesign
Now that you’ve done all the necessary preparations, it’s time to start planning the redesign. You can do this by creating a sitemap and information architecture for the website, wireframing and prototyping, and selecting a design theme or template that aligns with your brand identity.
4. Creating a Sitemap & Information Architecture
A sitemap is a diagram of your website’s content structure. It helps organize the website content effectively and ensures user-friendly navigation and flow.
When creating a sitemap, consider how you want people to reach their destination pages and what types of content are needed throughout the website. It also helps with SEO performance, as straightforward navigation ensures search engines can crawl the entire site easily.
Pro Tip: Keep an eye on maintaining a similar or better internal linking structure on your redesigned site compared to your existing site for minimizing SEO risks.
5. Wireframing & Prototyping
Once you have a sitemap, it’s time to start visualizing your website’s layout and structure.
Wireframing helps you create a quick prototype of the website that’s shareable with stakeholders for feedback and discussion. It also allows you to quickly make changes and test ideas without investing much time and money into coding.
6. Selecting the Right Design & Theme
The next step in planning your website redesign is selecting a design theme or template that balances aesthetics and functionality. Ensuring the design theme aligns with your brand identity is also essential.
When selecting a design, make sure it meets all of your business needs while being mobile-friendly and accessible to all users. It will help you create an engaging user experience that resonates with your target audience.
The Technical Considerations of a Website Redesign
Once the plan is ready, it’s time to get into the technical aspects of website redesign. It entails choosing the right content management system (CMS), mobile responsiveness, performance optimization, and preparing for potential problems during or after launch.
7. Choosing the Right Content Management System (CMS)
A content management system (CMS) is critical to your website’s overall performance, as it dictates how you’ll store and manage content. Exploring popular CMS options and their features can help you select the best one that meets your website’s needs.
For example, WordPress is a popular CMS with many features, but there may be better options if you’re building a web-based application. Knowing what you need and what each CMS offers will better inform your decision.
8. Mobile Responsiveness & Performance Optimization
It’s essential to prioritize mobile-friendliness and usability when redesigning a website. Statistically, more people access websites from their mobile devices than desktop computers.
Having a responsive design that looks great on any device size is essential for a successful website. Additionally, performance optimization is equally important for user experience and SEO success.
Website speed and loading times affect bounce rates and conversions, so it’s necessary to ensure the website is optimized for maximum performance on any device or browser.
Content Strategy for Website Redesign
Content is the ultimate fulcrum of a website, so creating and following a content strategy is vital when designing or redesigning a website.
9. A Comprehensive Content Strategy Entails the Following
- Auditing and refreshing existing content.
- Creating new content where necessary.
- Incorporating SEO best practices like keyword research.
- Tweak existing content to embed meta tags, image alt tags, and internal linking.
- Ensure content is scannable, optimized for mobile devices, and visually appealing.
10. Development and Testing
The development and testing process is the most crucial part of the website redesign. Collaborating with web developers and designers is essential to ensure seamless integration of design and functionality.
Define development milestones so you can test the website throughout the process to track progress and identify any issues. Early testing helps avert potential problems before the website launch. You will catch onto:
- Bugs.
- Errors.
- Broken links.
- Performance issues.
- Usability and accessibility problems.
Also, test the website on varying devices and browsers to ensure responsiveness and mobile-friendliness. Once the website is ready, it’s time for a final review among select peers before launch!
Launching the Redesigned Website & Tracking Results
You’ve come to the end of your website redesign journey: congratulations! Before launching the new website, double-check everything against your objectives to align with what you set out to achieve.
Once the website is live, you can start tracking results and analyzing user behavior post-launch. It’s essential to understand how users interact with the website, what content resonates with them, and where they leave your site. It will help you identify areas of improvement and make necessary changes accordingly.
The redesigned website represents a new chapter for your business, sure to bring more success and recognition. Now you know what to consider when planning a revamp, find out how much it would cost to redesign a website with professionals like us.
With the right strategy, you can reach new heights and take your brand to a new level. Redesign and revamp your website with us.
