Checklist for Website ReDesign 2021 Edition: The Ultimate Guide
What you need to check when you decide to redesign your website
When planning to get your website redesigned, what is the most important thing to consider? It should look good, Yes, but you need to ensure that you do not loose onto the current rankings and conversion factors.
Please find below a checklist of our recommendations for a website redesign in 2021.
- Checks what’s good in your Existing Website
- Create a new Website on a Temporary URL
- Recognize your Objective
- Get Inspired (Browse and learn from your competitors)
- Time to Redesign the Website
- Leverage Mobile-First Indexing by Google
- Optimize for Search Engines and Optimise for visitors
- Analyze the New Website
Checks what's good in your Existing Website
You will be surprised to know that the first step of any website redesign process is to check what is right on your current website. You need to identify what sections of the website are good and what requires reworking. Check out the performance indicators from your Google Analytics Account. Keep an eye on landing pages, pages where you are losing visitors, pages with high bounce rates, conversion rates, and abandonments in case it is an e-commerce website.
Hire website redesign professions for this audit if needed. This process plays a vital role cause you want to improve not scratch and reinvent the whole wheel. Identify the sections that are causing problems, brainstorm on what might be wrong, and aim your efforts on finding a fix for the same.
Create a new Website on a Temporary URL
Do not just go and take your existing website offline as you decide to revamp it. Let your existing website stay up and running till you make a new one. What is the point of showing we are undergoing a renovation page when you already have an old website? You do not want to lose the benefits of SEO you might have cultivated with the old website.
Host your new website on a temporary URL that is not indexable by the search engine. Finish the website redesign on this URL and migrate it to the existing live URL once you are satisfied.
Try not to do any changes in the URL structure and in case it is absolutely necessary for you to create a new URL then ensure you redirect the old URLs to new URLs with a 301 Redirect. This will help Search engines to audit and learn about the replacement URLs.
Try to work with a Website Redesign Specialist which can ensure that you do not do damage to the business when you perform this process.
Recognize your objective
Now there is a difference between the Purpose of your website and the Objective of your website redesign requirement. The purpose will mostly be to get more leads or get more customers but the objective of a website redesign is more of a supporting role to the main purpose. For Instance, you might want to redesign to give it a cleaner look, to be fast loading, to improve conversion rates, or shift to newer technology.
Be practical in your approach ahead of time as it will prevent and “SCOPE CREEP” later. Focus on the objective of redesigning your website and problems associated with that, once you have dealt with them move to the next section.
Get Inspired (Browse and learn from your competitors)
Your competitors will always be your best teachers. Do not turn a blind eye to them and do not just copy what they are doing on their website. They might not be wrong or right at all times. Review their websites, review websites of big companies in your line of business, and pick out the good things that you can adapt to your website. How they are showcasing information about the products, how they are engaging a visitor on the website, do they have email subscriptions, do they have exit intents, and many other things.
Ask your website redesign developers for insight on the latest changes in Google Algorithms like E-A-T and how they can use it to benefit your existing website redesign project.
Time to Redesign the Website
With all your planning done and issues identified it is time to start the redesign process. Your designers should give you User Interfaces and User Experience Flows. They should upgrade the content on the pages, changing the links and other modifications as per brand guidelines. They should adhere to the Scope document to prevent any derailing or loss of time. Good planning in the initial process will prevent any future “SCOPE CREEPS” in the project.
Choose a professional website designer to assist you as it will make your process faster and efficient.
Leverage Mobile-First Indexing by Google
In the last few months of 2020, Google has shifted the crawling of your website to a Mobile-First Indexing process. What it means to a layman is that Google prefers websites that look presentable in mobiles better than those that have broken UI or pinch-zoom experience in a website. Ensure the design that you choose works on the same process. The way mobile users are growing and the speeds of the internet improving (5G at the verge of launch) it is required for your business to ensure clear visibility on mobile, tablets, and laptops at the same time.
AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) should be on the checklist of your website redesign process.
Optimize for Search Engines and Optimise for visitors
When researching for SEO of your website ensure you do not create content just for search engines. What I mean by that is do not stuff keywords with the promise of ranking better and break the natural flow of words. Many companies fall prey to this kind of strategy but with no success.
Remember even if you rank high and the visitor coming to your website can not get the information he needs your whole purpose is defeated. Write your content for visitors as the search engines today are more advanced than they were in the 2000s. They understand when you are using a BLACK HAT SEO technique like Keyword Stuffing.
Analyze the New Website
So your new website is now live. Great! but is your work finished No…
Analyze your website for new few weeks to months to ensure it meets all the goals specified in your objective list. Check for ways to find bugs and squash them before they break a user experience. Check for website performance, traffic movement, conversion rates on Google Analytics to make decisions and ensure better results.
Partner With the Pros for Redesign and Development
The digital world has changed a lot due to the pandemic in 2020. With the time to focus on the digital aspect of the business more and more, companies have shifted to a stronger digital approach to doing business.
You might not be in the business of website redesigning but you surely know what you need. Work with a team of professionals who can understand your requirements and shows you the ways to measure success.
You may think to hire a freelancer to save you some money but does that freelancer has the knowledge required to design, develop, test, promote, and measure your website success at one time. I doubt that…
This is why you need a team of website redesigners or a reputed website redesigning company who can help you with your journey of redesigning your website.
The costs of a website redesign should be managed as per the business need and the right website redesign agency should offer you a range of prices or packages for your suitable need.
If you need help with your website redesigning project then checkout CSTech a professional website redesigning company.
