A website redesign is a significant investment but eventually necessary for your business. Whether you have a dated design, are rebranding your company, or aren’t seeing optimal results with your site’s SEO performance, redesigning a website can help achieve these goals.
As a business owner, it’s understandable to feel apprehensive about a website makeover. It’s a comprehensive process and requires various resources to execute successfully.
However, it doesn’t always have to be a complete website revamp.
You can take an easier approach to your redesign project as an ongoing process with a step-by-step plan.
How to Redesign a Website for Your Business: A Step-by-Step Guide
On average, businesses should redesign their websites every 1.5 to 2.5+ years. Website redesign frequency depends on various factors, like how often you maintain it and your site’s performance.
Some signs that it’s time for a website upgrade include:
- Weak SEO Performance: Rapidly declining keyword rankings, indexed pages, etc.
- Dated Site Design: Many text-heavy home page sliders, generic stock photos, etc.
- Poor Website Functionality: No website breadcrumbs, slow page load speed, etc.
- Rebranding: Merging companies, expanding product/service offerings, etc.
- Challenging Customization: Limited capabilities to edit design templates, can’t integrate popular third-party applications, etc.
- Poor Website Benchmarks: Rapidly declining conversion rates, form submissions, traffic, etc.
Below is a step-by-step guide on the website redesign process from initial strategy to relaunch.
Develop a Website Redesign Strategy
The first step in your website redesign project plan must be developing a strategy. Creating this foundation defines why you need to redesign your website in the first place.
Ask your team these key questions before you start the redesign process:
- Why do you want to redesign your website?
- Which website performance metrics do you want to improve?
- Who will be responsible for the redesign and development?
- How much budget do you have for the design and development?
- What are your goals with your new website design?
That way, you can set clear expectations and have a smoother redesign process for your team to execute more effectively.
Define What Your Website Makeover Should Look Like
A new website design is more than a makeover. It should align with your unique brand and support your bottom line. Defining what the site’s new visuals and messaging should look like is essential to a successful redesign.
Ask your team these key design questions before you start the redesign process:
- What do you like and dislike about your current site?
- Which features do you want to add or remove from your current site?
- What new designs do you want to see on your site, and why?
- Do you have inspirational design examples to reference?
- Can you provide website branding guidelines, like fonts and colors?
If you need more guidance on your site’s visual designs, research your competitors and industry leaders as inspiration. Just be sure you make it align with your unique brand and that it doesn’t exactly copy.
Additionally, you must follow key website redesign best practices, including ample blank space to prevent text-heavy pages and contrasting colors for balance.
Analyze Your Site Audit Metrics Before Redesigning
Don’t redesign your website for the sake of looks only. While dated site designs are important to upgrade, the purpose of your redesign project should be data-driven through a website audit. That way, you can make the necessary changes and investments for optimal results. You may discover areas of your site that need improvement you didn’t notice before.
Common website audit metrics to analyze for a redesign include:
- Top pages with the most organic traffic
- Total keyword rankings
- Top pages with the most leads
- Top pages with the most conversions
When evaluating these metrics, check if their rates are increasing or decreasing to know which pages to prioritize first. Investing in your top-performing pages first can help maintain its performance during the redesign process.
You should also note your lower-performing web pages to know which areas to prioritize for improvement. If you see a high cart abandonment rate or declining conversions, your website may have a poor user experience (UX). Your current site design may be making it harder for potential customers to convert, like no saved payment method features or slow page load speeds.
Use a New Website Platform If Necessary
You can waste time and resources on a website redesign if your current platform has many limitations on its capabilities. If you can’t customize the design template to meet your branding guidelines or integrate vital e-commerce features for your business, like a one-click checkout, you likely won’t meet your redesign goals.
Your website platform shouldn’t hold you back from getting your ideal site design. If this is the case, be prepared for a website migration. Your web developers should utilize sitemap lists, create 301 redirects, and set up Google Analytics to streamline the data transfer process.
Create a Content Strategy for Your New Website Design
To maximize your content marketing ROI during a website redesign, organize your current content into three categories:
- Removable Content: Deleting vague home page details that don’t immediately define your brand, talking about your company instead of how you can help your target audience, etc.
- Updated Content: Adding captivating infographics, embedding Google reviews to product pages, integrating a separate blog website to your main site, etc.
- New Content: Creating individual location pages for multiple in-person stores or service areas, making short clip videos for software demos, adding more downloadables, etc.
Quality website content that ranks high on Google can be one of your biggest ROI drivers over time—especially when you’re investing in a new site design.
Re-Optimize Your Site for SEO
Website redesign SEO is a critical step. It ensures you protect your top-performing pages while improving your lower ones during the redesign process.
Conducting an SEO audit for your site will guide you on where to start, such as:
- Search Valued Pages: Pages with the highest and lowest traffic, lead generation, conversions, etc.
- Metadata/On-Page SEO: Page tiles without keyword optimization, missing headings, duplicate meta descriptions, etc.
- Technical SEO: Pages with slow page load speed, broken links, no SSL, etc.
- Off-Page SEO: Pages with the highest-quality backlinks, traffic from social media, etc.
Luckily, popular SEO platforms make it easy to prioritize which web pages you should redesign first. They’ll flag which pages are impacting your website’s SEO performance most to least.
Test Your Site Redesign
Now you’re at the final step before a website relaunch. Before going live, test it to ensure everything functions properly and looks how it should.
Conduct A/B testing via email with two versions of one of your web pages to see which ones users respond to better. Your target audience may download more free template guides with one CTA button color or text over another. It’s about learning which designs work best with your consumers without assuming.
Also, send your website’s staging link to your team for their review on the following:
- Proofreading web copy for typos, grammatical errors, and effective messaging
- Clicking all links to confirm they’re not broken or directing to the wrong page
- Navigating the website as a visitor to ensure your redesign has a strong UX
Once your new site design has been approved for final review, you can relaunch! We also encourage monitoring your website post-launch to confirm its performance continues successfully.
Website Redesign FAQs
Below are some of the most common FAQs when redesigning a website.
Why Redesign a Website?
Your SEO ROI is technically calculated by the profit or your sales/revenue after your content marketing expenses:
Website redesigns are necessary if they’re not functioning as they should or aren’t supporting your bottom line. Analyzing your website audit reports can determine if minor updates can fix current issues or if a redesign is warranted.
How Often Should You Redesign Your Website?
You should redesign your website every 1.5 to 2.5+ years. It depends on how often you maintain it and your marketing goals.
Should I Use Website Redesign Services or DIY?
While DIY web redesign is doable with user-friendly website platform builders and template designs, you can maximize your investment and results with a website redesign company. They understand how to optimize your new design within your unique business goals and streamline the process with their expertise—saving you time and resources.
Make the Most of Your Site’s Makeover with a Website Redesign Agency
Your website is the foundation of your business. In a competitive digital marketplace, it’s crucial that your site stands out and performs well for your bottom line. Investing in professional website redesign is the best way to maximize your budget and accomplish your company’s goals.
At Reach Marketing Pro, our in-house web developers and designers have extensive experience revamping dated sites, rebranding, re-optimizing for SEO, and more. We know how to make your website look as good as it performs with monthly reporting to ensure it generates optimal results.
Ready to make the most of your website’s makeover?
Learn more about our website design and development services, or contact us for help today!
