Judgments on website credibility are 75% based on design quality level and general aesthetics, according to InVisionApp. That is why you should always be aware your website provides users with what they want.
It is important not to miss a moment when your website requires a redesign. These steps below will help you understand when the right moment comes and avoid common pitfalls.
What Should You Start With?
Checking these points may contribute to your final thought to start a corporate website redesign.
Analyze Your Website
For a start, monitor the primary metrics of your website. What is the bounce rate and conversion rate? Does the website’s traffic grow? Also, if sales don’t grow, it is one more wake-up call for you to consider. Use heatmap tools to measure visitors’ activity and to know your users better.
Find Out What Your Competitors Are Doing
Don’t hesitate to analyze the websites of your niche competitors. Check out what particularities their design has, what up-to-date design trends they use, and compare it with your website. If you see that there are modern trends you haven’t used in your design, you will know why redesign a website is a must-have step.
Make Sure Your Content Is Valuable
Then the next step is to evaluate the content level. Your content should be highly valuable to potential customers. Besides, it must be simple to understand, easy-to-read, and topical. Yes, you can update content on your website without redesign, of course. However, when your content delivery methods change, it may be a good reason for the redesign.
Figure Out How Scalable Your Website Is
It is not a secret that users today prefer mobile devices to desktops. Well, when it comes to online purchases, desktops gain the lead. But browsing is performed mostly via mobile devices. It means your website should be mobile responsive, otherwise, users won’t feel comfortable surfing your website via their gadgets, and they may switch to competitors’ services.
Set Your Goals
Determine clearly why you need a website redesign. You need to set goals on what you plan to achieve with a new design. Write down your ideas and expectations for the future when a redesign is done. It will help you keep up with your business goals and provide the target audience with proper services.
Challenges You Should Be Prepared For And Tips To Avoid Them
The moon has its dark side. So has the redesign stage. And you may face specific pitfalls during the redesign. We will list the main of them to help you avoid problems until it is too late.
Design Became More Complicated
Double-check how UI/UX design looks after redesign. UX may be more complicated and unclear for potential users. A website should be more intuitive for users, let them complete the sales process as quickly as possible (or give them other services they are looking for). Your goal is to ensure users obtain what they need without obstacles.
You Forgot About Your Target Audience
This issue has something similar to the one above. When the redesign is done, it may happen that your site doesn’t reach its end users. How to avoid it? First, you need to put yourself in the shoes of the end user. To do it, you should know exactly what your target audience is, analyze it. Check it out why customer research is important and what it affects.
Furthermore, it would be a perfect option if you could survey the website’s users, collect their feedback. When you find out whether users are satisfied with a new design or have any complaints vice versa, you will be able to consider all the requirements of your audience.
Branding Guidelines Ignoring
Consistency comes first, remember? It means redesign should be done in compliance with specific documented branding guidelines. It is a critical issue since, without strict rules that must be complied with, designers will adopt different methods to design processes. As a result, it will lead to inconsistency and mess on your website.
Always keep in mind that users remember your brand and redesign shouldn’t confuse them. Since it will lead to misunderstanding between you and customers, they may even decide your brand that looks differently on various devices is not what they are used to. And they found your website by mistake.
404 error
And last but not the least challenge is a 404 error that may occur after a complete redesign. For example, you changed the name of your brand. And there is no question like “why redesign your website is essential?”, it is rhetorical. Then, it is required to change URLs on some pages (or all of them) considering a new brand name.
To avoid 404 errors when users will visit your website via old URLs, web developers must set up 301 redirects. And the old URL will lead visitors to new URLs without failures. In case if you aren’t going to implement total rebranding, mind to set up redirects to pages that will be removed. If you want to optimize your website, for example.
Reasons To Redesign Your Website
And, finally, let’s review the reasons why you should redesign your website after you have undertaken all the beginning steps from the first section of our article.
You need to improve UX.
An enjoyable experience is a key factor why your users prefer your website. And your task is to give them perfect UX. If you start collecting feedback about complicated or unclear UX, you need to think about improvements. To implement it, you should analyze users’ behavior with certain user analytics tools and think through the goals of your website properly.
Your website is still non-responsive.
As we noted above, you need to take into account that the responsiveness of your website is highly recommended. Your website should be great-looking both on desktops and on mobile devices regardless of screen size. And users will become more loyal to your website since it will earn their trust. You may need the assistance of a skilled design team, so drop us a line, it takes a few seconds.
A number of leads leave something to be desired.
You have analyzed your website, and you saw that the conversion rate is low, the bounce rate is high, and the number of leads doesn’t grow. Without customers, your sales won’t grow as well. Therefore, a website redesign can be a point of departure to the success of your business.
Your branding needs a second wind.
For example, you concluded that your brand is too obsolete. Or it doesn’t make people associate your services with your brand. Ok, it is said and done. But rebranding will impact on the entire design of a website, so we recommend to redesign your site to let it reflect all changes of your new brand.
Your website uses outdated tools.
We mean third-party tools like plugins, scripts, and so on. Over time these tools may impact the performance level of your website, they may not comply with current standards, and it is one more hint for you when to redesign your website.
As you can see, there are many ways how you can understand that redesign is what your website needs. However, if you still have any questions, our team of specialists will help you deal with all the issues related to a website redesign or any other specific design challenge.
