In today’s evolving digital age, one of the first impressions your brand will make to potential customers is through your website. Given that first impressions are everything, you can only imagine how important it is for your website to be the best!
Your website is the place that helps people decide if they should invest their time, money and resources in your business. So, it has to be unique, fresh and one that helps you make the right impression.
But did you know it takes only about 50 milliseconds or 0.05 seconds for users to form an opinion about your website that determines whether they like it or not and whether they will stay or not! This means that sometimes you may have to give your website a new look by giving it a revamp. Find out how you can improve performance of your website
In this article, we will take a look at a step-by-step process towards how you can revamp your website to make it look perfect! Also consider reading 8 Things to Consider as You Plan Website Improvements in 2022
Step 1: Understanding your new website vis-à-vis your current one
One of the first steps to website redesign is to critically look at your old website and see what elements worked there and what you can carry forward to the new website. You can always use tools like Google Analytics to determine which pages had a high bounce rate and ensure you make due changes in the new website.
You don’t have to change everything during a website redesign. However, do ensure you consider the pain points and make those changes while setting up the structure of the revamped website.
Step 2: Taking a decision on CMS
Deciding on whether you should retain your existing Content Management System (CMS) or change it is a crucial part of your website revamp. This decision depends on factors like what are your pain points with the current CMS, is there a gap between your requirements and the CMS functions, how much the site structure will change, what are the costs involved, is the current CMS future-proof etc. You can take the decision after talking to your IT and compliance teams and other stakeholders involved.
Step 3: Organizing your content plan
Planning and organizing website content can be overwhelming, but this is the most significant step. Deciding on the addition of new pages, optimizing existing pages to improve SEO, finalizing the structure of resources in the new website including blogs, infographics, ebooks, white papers etc should be given due consideration and time.
While revamping, your content strategy has to be built around what your users are actually searching for instead of making assumptions. It is also better to put together the content first and then decide the design instead of the other way around.
Step 4: Identifying redesign plan for new website
Before deciding on what design you want to go ahead with, you should look at reports on current trends in web design, check competitors’ websites, and analyze design tips and best practices. Your website revamp team and all the stakeholders involved can lead the way in this case by giving suggestions and ideas.
Once you are done with these basics, you can then move to the actual design elements like graphics specifications. The theme you ultimately choose should be related to your overall corporate identity, budget, preferences and the industry you work in.
The next step is to determine what kind of visual elements you need for your new website. People tend to respond strongly to visual elements which is why graphics play a key role. More than simply designing website elements such as logos, icons, and background graphics, the redesign needs to focus on creating a stronger visual presence for your business.
Based on these factors, you can then decide on what kind of images, graphics, videos, infographics, art and illustration should be used on the website.
Step 6: Maintaining uniformity in website style
The human eye most often appreciates uniformity and balance which is why it is important to maintain the style and design continuity throughout your website. You will have to focus well on your brand colors and see how they are evenly distributed on the website.
For this, you can take your website redesign one element at a time and then figure out what elements will extend across all pages and which are specific to individual pages. The colors you choose to brand your business website will have an effect on people, so it’s good to choose those wisely.
Step 7: Zeroing on fonts and size
Your website font conveys a message to your audience before they even start reading the copies on the site. The best fonts to use for a website are the ones that are easily readable.
While choosing the right fonts is important throughout the website, it is even more relevant for CTA buttons, inline banners etc. The font, size, weight and letter spacing all need to form a seamless reading experience.
Step 8: Deciding on navigational menu
The structure of your navigation can have a huge impact on the results of your website. Navigation affects traffic in terms of how high you’ll rank, how much traffic you’ll get, how easy the site is to use etc.
It is a good idea to select easy navigation and design for header and footers, important pages, categories displaying, featured post links to be covered in footer, social media sharing buttons etc. A featured post plugin enables you to showcase some of your latest resources like perhaps a recently published blog or some other quality content with good potential towards conversion. Social sharing buttons are also a necessary element to complement your content, drive traffic, and create a good amount of engagement.
Step 9: Testing website for pre-launch checks
A little before the actual launch, it is imperative to check whether all functional aspects of the website work as intended. Since usability is important for conversions and overall SEO, you need to look at each element just as a site visitor would. Check for spellings and grammar, look at the mobile compatibility and test if it is design-responsive on different devices, do a speed test to check if the website speed is good on desktop as well as mobile and so on.
While doing so, you have to ensure all images are optimized for speed, all call-to-action forms and contact forms are tested, login procedure is checked, roles and credentials are looked at and so on.
Step 10: Finalizing the launch date
Once all the final checks are in place and you feel satisfied with the results, it is time to decide when you want to actually launch the website. Check for any last-minute errors and additions before going live and prioritise the things you need. It is sometimes inevitable that minor issues may present themselves after the site is live, however, if you are prepared, it is easy to deal with them.
During this process, it’s important to remember that your business should not be hampered while the transition from old website to new website is going on.
This was our comprehensive website redesign checklist! It may not always be easy to follow by the book, given that there are strict deadlines or time challenges. Nonetheless, it is definitely helpful to follow these steps as closely as possible to make the process easy. These will help you create a new website that pulls traffic and generates leads just as you want it to!