A Guide to Website Redesign - Part 1

A couple of months ago I was invited to put together a presentation for one of the online classes at MarketingProfs.com. The twenty-minute presentation covered topics relevant to agencies and customers getting ready for a redesign project. What I have realized is that twenty minutes is much too short to cover everything I wanted to cover and so the idea for this three-part article was born.

The article is split into three parts:

• Identifying the existing challenges and goals for the website
• Planning the redesign: audience, goals, content and functionality
• Developing the solution and evaluating success

Identify Challenges

Have you ever found yourself trying to obscure the URL of your website on a new batch of marketing materials you are having printed? It’s actually a true story I’ve heard from more than one customer. There are approximately 272 million Internet users in United States alone and this number is growing at a rate of 20 million a year. Exposing your business to this audience is critical and the first step of redesigning your website is about identifying current challenges and setting some goals for the website as a marketing platform.

Let’s identify some of the potential ailments that a redesign may address:

• Website is old. Yes, websites age. Some better than others, but all websites have an expiration date and every now and then a business needs to evaluate the site and commit to a redesign. The abundance of new technologies, design trends, increasing monitor resolutions (more real estate to display the content), and other factors may make websites built five years ago look ancient. Just like your business, the website needs to evolve and a comprehensive digital strategy helps you stay on top.
• Business has changed. New products and services are offered by the company and the current website does not communicate well with the target audience. The business has grown and the original edgy “I run this from my garage” approach may no longer apply or scares away customers.
• Design is not professional. Lack of aesthetics on the site lead to lack of credibility and that can become a deal killer for a new visitor scoping out a potential commitment. First impressions are very important on the web because you only have a couple of seconds to impress the visitor before they go back to the search results and click on the next link.
• Does not meet functional requirements. An example may be a search box that does not return accurate results or does not have autosuggest functionality implemented. There will be times when new custom functionality is needed on the website to deliver the best experience to the visitors.
• Failure in Information Architecture. Content Strategy and Information Architecture are critical aspects of maintaining a usable website. Grouping and presentation of content should never feel overwhelming and websites without a clear content strategy tend to become overburdened by irrelevant historical content.

In some cases you will find that a complete redesign is not necessary and a more gradual approach can be used to improve the problem areas.

Inventory Content

A good way to start the process is to inventory all pages of the website and re-evaluate goals set forth for the site. While you may know every single page of the site, I would recommend using a sitemap generation tool to create a nice catalog of all pages. Even if you are starting from scratch an inventory of existing content may help you build out goals for the new site. Once established, review the list and ask yourself the following questions:

• Are all pages still relevant? Simple is beautiful so mark pages that you don’t need.
• Is content up to date? Does it generate value or is it just filler? Mark pages that may need to be rewritten.
• What purpose do the pages serve? Create a spreadsheet and in a new column add a single goal per page. Examples may be to inform visitor about company history, create a lead, or provide in depth whitepapers about a solution.

This content catalog will help you communicate with the agency or technology company that will be redesigning your website. Even if they end up completely reengineering the Information Architecture at least you will know that you did not forget anything important.

Return of Investment – A Scenario of Success

A website is a tool for business to achieve results. As such it must be treated as an investment and its success calculated based on the returns generated. Some results are more tangible than others but this model can be applied to online revenue, market awareness (page views and visitors), and lead generation.

Part of the process involves a bit of guesswork but just the exercise itself may answer questions that you had about goals, challenges, and areas of improvement.

A pretend scenario could be described as follows:

• Cost of redesign is $20,000.00
• Goal: returning customers up to 15% (perhaps because you are planning to implement upselling functionality and email reminders when people leave your website with items in their cart)
• Goal: conversion rate increase to 2.5% from 1.5%
• Goal: average order size up to $100

Based on above calculate number of months needed for the project to pay for itself. While some of the numbers may be somewhat inaccurate, you can use market statistics to validate them. With quick research I was able to find on Google that website redesigns increase traffic by an average of 15%. Conversion rate usually go up by 20% to 50% (rates vary by industry starting with 1.8% to 2.25%, with niche industries having up to 5%).

Perform Reconnaissance

Sneaking through enemy lines covered in camouflage to retrieve top-secret documents is one way of gathering intelligence. Luckily for us it’s much simpler to evaluate the competition on the web.

Find market leaders in your industry and take a look at their web strategy: can you innovate on existing features or simply do something better on your website? Can your service or product compete in terms of pricing or features? Access is available to everyone on the web so take the time to look at the big players in your field and note the things you like so you could better communicate with your creative and technology team.

Coming Soon – Part 2

This concludes the first part of the series. I hope that the article has been helpful and as a result you have fresh new ideas on how to approach the redesign of the next website. Next article will cover the planning stages: feedback, wireframes, page specific goals, content, and SEO. Stay tuned!