27 May Why Should You Consider a Website Redesign?
Has it been a few years since you last updated your website? Is your business going through a rebranding process? Are you looking for ways to improve your website’s ranking on Google? Any or all of these reasons could be a worthy justification for a website redesign. A website redesign can give your website and your business a more modern appearance, while offering improved user-friendliness — both of which can improve your overall brand image, sales and customer loyalty.
Redesigning a website can be an essential step in keeping your brand relevant in this ever-changing digital age. However, there is much to consider when doing so in order to make sure the redesign successfully meets your needs. In this blog post, we’re going to take a look at where to start with your website redesign, why you need to chart out a sitemap, and the necessity of mobile-friendly design.
Where to Start
Achieving an effective website redesign all depends on the foundation set at the beginning of the project. Planning your website redesign from the very start ensures that all design and function elements will be properly implemented and reliable for years to come.
In order to know what elements of your website need the most attention, conducting an SEO audit is a crucial first step in the redesign process. An SEO audit will reveal the more technical and on-page SEO aspects of your current website. Analyzing this audit will help you develop a focused improvement strategy, which will be the roadmap to the rest of redesigning your website. Of course, it’s also important to analyze your audit in comparison to your marketing goals and your target audience. This way, your brand will be less likely to waste time and energy on website elements that might not need to be your top priorities.
In other words, a successful website redesign depends upon knowing your target audience, as well as setting clear goals and objectives. You can gain insight to your audience when conducting your SEO audit by determining which pages users most often visit on your website, when they are most frequently visiting, how they find and access your website, and more. This data can lead to improvements in how current users interact with your website,while the gaps in the user data can also help you identify how your website redesign can draw in new target audience members.
Finally, your goals for your redesign should be clearly set from the beginning, along with the objectives you would like to accomplish with the new website. The general goals should be attracting more visitors to your website and increasing the quality of user engagement. Your redesign objectives, on the other hand, should focus on clearly communicating what your business offers, increasing conversion rates, and allowing visitors to take action.
Charting out a Sitemap
Once you have taken your first steps of auditing your website, understanding your audience, and setting clear goals and objectives, you can take the first design step — creating a sitemap. A sitemap is a visual representation of how your website’s pages and content are organized, both currently and for your redesign. Sitemaps help optimize the organization of your content both for users and for search engines.
Visually representing your sitemap can be accomplished through a flowchart or other design method so that restructuring your website around its organization will be much easier. Redesigning your website may not result in major changes to your primary navigation, but there could be more extensive changes to sub-navigation options for improved organization.
Here’s what you need to develop your new sitemap:
- Your existing sitemap
- A list of your existing products or services
- A consistent format for page and navigation titles
Make It Mobile-friendly
If your website doesn’t automatically adapt its layout to better suit the screens of mobile devices (smartphones, tablets, etc.), then your website isn’t mobile-friendly. Having a mobile-friendly website has become an essential part of SEO in order for your website to rank well due to Google’s algorithm updates that prioritize mobile responsiveness. Not to mention, users who access your website via mobile devices — who are likely the majority — will also increase their likelihood of engaging with your website when it’s mobile-friendly.
Simply put, users want a seamless experience — not one where they have to struggle to properly see and engage with your website’s content. Redesigning your website is a great opportunity to implement a responsive web design, also known as a mobile-friendly design.
Redesigning Your Website Is a Worthy Investment
Redesigning your website is more than simply making it look better, although that is certainly important. It also means upgrading both on-page and back-end features to ensure a seamless user experience that your customers and audience can rely on for years to come. Our Virtual Stacks Systems UK team can help make your redesign dreams a reality with website redesign services, SEO services and more. From user experience to mobile responsive design, we have the experience to modernize your brand. Contact us today to discuss your website redesign and other digital marketing needs.