Website Redesign: Tips That You Must Know

With­out a doubt, ham­mer­ing out a web­site redesign is not easy since you often need to update to the lat­est dig­i­tal plat­forms, cre­ate new pages, scrape old ones, devel­op new options regard­ing nav­i­ga­tion, and intro­duce new fea­tures — all while keep­ing your cus­tomers in mind. 

Whether you’ve cho­sen to redesign your web­site because you’re los­ing traf­fic or because it’s out­dat­ed, a prop­er refresh can solve many prob­lems. Still, if done incor­rect­ly, an updat­ed plat­form can also do poten­tial harm to your business.

As such, the team here at Rosy Strate­gies has com­piled a list of excel­lent web­site redesign tips to ensure that the tran­si­tion to a new dig­i­tal look and feel will be smooth and successful. 

How to Redesign Your Website? 

First, we believe that the things that are good for your cus­tomers are also good for your busi­ness (and web­site). As such, you should per­form the redesign with your loy­al audi­ence in mind. 

Tech­ni­cal­ly, redesign­ing a web­site can be described as a sig­nif­i­cant over­haul of your plat­form, where devel­op­ers often change cru­cial ele­ments like site struc­ture, code, con­tent, and visu­als to serve your site vis­i­tors bet­ter. A prop­er web­site redesign should help boost your rev­enue, increase lead gen­er­a­tion, decrease bounce rates, and improve over­all user experience. 

While often used inter­change­ably, we should point out that a web­site refresh and a web­site redesign aren’t exact­ly the same. 

To redesign a web­site typ­i­cal­ly involves chang­ing both the visu­al iden­ti­ty of the web­site and the core struc­ture (think: code and func­tion­al­i­ty). A redesign will include a new visu­al appeal that plays into your brand’s iden­ti­ty along with improved, clean­er code, more mod­ern site func­tion­al­i­ty, and updat­ed infor­ma­tion archi­tec­ture, all going live simultaneously.

A web­site refresh will often leave the core struc­ture and the site’s func­tion­al­i­ty alone with only a few minor tweaks. The changes in the case of a refresh are more appar­ent in the look and the feel of the web­site, and developers/designers might also tweak the user experience. 

Still, in the end, both of these process­es aim to cater to your cus­tomers by improv­ing the qual­i­ty of their time spent on your platform. 

Before the Website Redesign: Ask These Questions

It’s need­less to say that you should con­duct seri­ous research before start­ing the web­site redesign process. This is an effec­tive way to under­stand the lat­est trends bet­ter and get a sharp­er pic­ture of what your vis­i­tors want to make your plat­form bet­ter fit their wants and needs.

To do that, you need to answer the fol­low­ing questions:

• Which pages are the most valu­able on my web­site at the moment?
• Who are my vis­i­tors, and why are they coming?
• What are those mea­sur­able cus­tomer needs that my site fails to meet?
• What is my team using my site for? 
• What pages and ele­ments work great?
• How will I be able to mea­sure the suc­cess of the redesign? 

5 Crucial Website Redesign Tips 

When approach­ing and actu­al­ly going through the process of the web­site redesign, these six point­ers should be in your mind at all times. 

1. Know each page’s val­ue to your business

Redesign­ing your web­site is like redesign­ing a house. You won’t just grab a ham­mer and swing it ran­dom­ly, knock­ing out essen­tial load-bear­ing ele­ments. The same should apply to your web­site. Cre­ate a map of your site’s ecosys­tem to see which pages need to be han­dled more care­ful­ly and which ones should be rebuilt completely. 

For instance, pages with high traf­fic and con­ver­sions need to be man­aged with care because a mis­take can have detri­men­tal effects. Pages with high con­ver­sion and low traf­fic also need to be assessed care­ful­ly. Pages with high traf­fic and low con­ver­sions should be inspect­ed to improve those ele­ments and see what’s not work­ing con­ver­sion-wise. You are free to exper­i­ment on pages with low con­ver­sions and traf­fic because you’re not real­ly los­ing any con­ver­sions and traffic. 

2. Under­stand why your vis­i­tors flock to your site

After iden­ti­fy­ing your most valu­able pages, you should also strive to find out who’s vis­it­ing the pages and why. 

Do the vis­i­tors want to learn about your prod­ucts? Do they want to reach out or vis­it your phys­i­cal loca­tion? Maybe they want to learn some­thing about your services/products? Ulti­mate­ly, do they want to buy some­thing from you?

Cre­at­ing cus­tomer per­sonas should come in handy at this stage. The gath­ered per­sona info can help you get a bet­ter pic­ture of WHO you are design­ing for and can help you keep in mind their moti­va­tions and needs. 

3. Know what con­vinces your cus­tomers and what stops them 

Iden­ti­fy the bar­ri­ers stop­ping your cus­tomers from com­plet­ing the desired actions on your site and see what the hooks are that keep them going. 

• Do they get stuck and expe­ri­ence issues?
• Is there func­tion­al­i­ty that crash­es on some pages? 
• What works great on each page?
• What do your vis­i­tors like and dis­like about the over­all user expe­ri­ence of your site? 
• Are your CTAs converting?
• Is your site mobile-friendly?
• Are they frus­trat­ed because of some features? 
• What stops users from converting? 

Using web­site heatmaps, ses­sion record­ings, on-site sur­veys, and oth­er ana­lyt­ics tools can help pin­point the areas that are work­ing well and the things that are caus­ing problems. 

Using your exist­ing insight and data is also cru­cial at this point. Gath­er every info you have regard­ing user behav­ior and go from there. 

4. Get your team involved

Hav­ing your staff active­ly par­tic­i­pate in the web­site redesign process can help you gain even more insight. They can point out spe­cif­ic prob­lems you might need to look into. What’s more, they might have valu­able tips and ideas regard­ing UX improve­ments and may help you cre­ate an even stronger brand iden­ti­ty. After all, they are also rep­re­sent­ing your business. 

5. Test every­thing and know how to mea­sure your success 

Dur­ing the redesign process, make sure to test every change and tweak. A/B test­ing, mod­er­at­ed usabil­i­ty test­ing, and sev­er­al oth­er test­ing pro­to­cols can help you iden­ti­fy how each tweak and change may affect your vis­i­tors’ expe­ri­ence on your page. 

Met­rics are a web­site’s best friend. After fin­ish­ing your redesign and test­ing every­thing, your KPIs or key per­for­mance indi­ca­tors should tell you how your improved web­site’s performing. 

Rev­enue-relat­ed met­rics direct­ly tie back to your redesign. If you’ve man­aged to cre­ate a new site that your cus­tomers love, you will see an:

• Increase in conversion
• Bet­ter revenue
• Increase in aver­age order value
• Bet­ter cus­tomer life­time value

Work With the Best

Learn­ing all about how to redesign a web­site may seem over­whelm­ing and com­plex. At the same time, main­tain­ing an online pres­ence is a com­plex job that requires con­tin­u­ous effort. That’s why we encour­age you to work with an expe­ri­enced web­site redesign com­pa­ny that already has a sol­id under­stand­ing of the lat­est cus­tomer trends and how peo­ple tend to inter­act with brands online. By part­ner­ing up with a sea­soned dig­i­tal agency like ours, you can stay focused on grow­ing your busi­ness. We will ensure that your dig­i­tal ecosys­tem is up-to-date and con­vert­ing leads into customers.