A website redesign is a website project that wipes the slate clean, with a complete strategy, structure, system and design overhaul of your website. Below are seven major things to consider and prioritise when undergoing a website redesign.
What is a Website Redesign?
A redesign utilises thorough research, information architecture and stakeholder participation to lay strong foundations for future functionality, longevity and performance based on bleeding-edge technologies. It is recommended for sites that have been over-developed or are outdated, resulting in a highly optimised, cohesive and functional site with measurable KPIs and goals.
7 Things to Prioritise During a Website Redesign
1. Navigation
Can your users and customers easily navigate through your website? Do you have best-selling products or new services that are not currently listed in your main menu? Now is the time to reevaluate your navigation to ensure all important pages are included. This comes hand-in-hand with information architecture – the process of organising and labelling content logically and intuitively, ensuring key information is accessible to website visitors.
2. Site Speed
Performing a site speed test on your current website, prior to a redesign, will give you a good indication of how quickly your site loads for users, and if this could be affecting conversions. Your redesigned website should then be optimised to ensure fast loading times, which is essential for user experience and search engine optimisation. Your new site should have compressed images, ideally in WebP format, and should implement lazy loading so that images only load when a user scrolls.
3. Fix Performance Issues
This includes improving server response times, which also means you should take into account your website hosting, focusing on Google’s Core Web Vitals.
Additionally, a website redesign should address any broken pages, broken links, and caching issues.
4. Update Case Studies
Do you have new case studies that haven’t been added to your website? It’s important to showcase your latest work, sharing it with your prospective customers, so that they can see the benefits of working with you and visualise how working with you could enhance or improve their lives or pain points. As part of the information architecture and content population steps involved in a website redesign, you should analyse case studies that should be added to your website, along with high-quality images to include.
5. Upgrade Key Landing Pages
Now is the perfect time to use Google Analytics to strategically identify your key landing pages and update them with new content or features. Landing pages are those that showcase your main offerings or drive the most traffic and conversions. They therefore require more redesign effort as they represent a higher return on investment.
You should ensure that the written content is accurate and up-to-date, incorporating new high-quality images or videos to make the page engaging and to showcase your work to its full potential. As part of the wider redesign, these pages should be analysed for usability issues, such as slow load times or poor mobile responsiveness, and fixed as a priority.
6. Remove Outdated Content
Evergreen blog content should be updated and refined to ensure it continues to speak to your target audience, addressing their specific needs. This includes ensuring that facts and data are still correct, reviewing your keywords and on-page SEO, and strengthening the call to action.
7. Visual Refresh
Of course, one of the main reasons that you are undertaking a website design is to refresh the website visually. Ensure that it has a modern design that reflects your brand identity.
A new website design should also ensure that your branding is consistent, with colours, logos and illustrations. Need help with formalising your branding? Our visual identity service would be perfect for you, as it allows us to form the foundation for your brand to elevate your organisation and attract new customers.
Successful Website Redesigns
We take the hassle and headache out of website redesigns. If your website is underperforming or outdated, it may be time for a website redesign. Contact our team now to discuss your requirements and ideas and see how we can create a powerful and well-performing website, to help your business succeed and grow online.
