Things You Should Know Before Redesigning Your Website

Your website needs to be redesigned - how exciting! This is an opportunity for the creative muse to take precedence and to dream big. Imagine how good your redesigned logo or name is going to look on your new website. You are going to have so much fun with your design team. Just imagine the potential; the design world is your oyster.

Allow Your Creative Muse Free Rein, but Plan, Plan and Plan

Even though your creative muse is going to run wild with all the wonderful changes you are imagining, it is important to realize that you need to plan and structure the redesign process. It is better to slow down, rein the creative muse in for a short while, and draw up a comprehensive, detailed plan of your goals and how you are going to reach them. The process of redesigning is not something you can do at a snap of a finger, though. It requires long hours of deliberation, planning, and staging.

Increase Your Conversion Rate Optimization

It is also important to remember that a complete site redesign is not something out of the ordinary. It needs to happen on a regular basis. The digital world is highly competitive, and if your site is currently not up to date with the latest trends, you stand the chance of losing your hard-earned customers. Your aim is to redesign your website in such a way that you, not only retain your existing customers, you increase the potential of converting visitors to your website into returning customers.

To save you from problems that may occur once you've launched the new design, you must make sure that every step you take in the process of redesigning is the right one. Here are some of the things that are necessary for you to note while you are in the planning stages of your website redesign process:

Minimize the changes you make with your URLs

If you're going all out, you might be considering how you should change all the lousy URLs you found on your site. If you do so, your site will more organized and clean and contents will be described more fully. However, this kind of change can be too overwhelming. Firstly, you can lose the reputation you have built in search engines. All the link building you've done before you make the change will also go to waste. As a result, it is not a good idea to change your website pages' URLs unless you have no other option.

If you really feel the necessity to rename a URL, you can redirect all requests from the old page towards the new one. The process is not too long, but it is a hassle.

Change site appearance through CSS

When your site makes use of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), then you can easily change its appearance without having to go to major reworking, like changing each page. You only have to do the modification with the CSS file.

Other web platforms allow easy redesigning on the front end, too. However, there are usually some limits on how much you can add extra functionality. You will have to inquire and clarify it with the platform's support system.

Keep the things that worked

When there are things in your old website design that you think are working well, then you are not under the obligation to change them. In fact, it's better if you keep them. It'll take a load off your work. To know if an aspect of your website is performing well, you can review previous records and conduct research.

Allow professional website developers to do the job for you

Redesigning requires a lot of skill. It's a difficult task for those who only have average-level of knowledge in web development. Since time and money are at stake, mistakes are things you can't readily afford. To minimize the risk of making errors and get maximum impact, it's better if you let a professional do the task.

Test the impact of your new design before you launch your site

Redesigning your website does not assure you of getting more traffic. In fact, you may even see a little drop in your SEO result for a span of time. However, redesigning is sure to modernize your brand. You will not see the results of your effort quickly. You need to have patience for this. Test your new site and make revisions when necessary. You might also want to hire someone who can help build and secure your newly designed site's reputation, like ReputationDefender.

Final Words

The redesign of your company's website can be both exciting and stressful. If the redesign process is structured and implemented properly, you will have a new website that will increase your company's digital visibility as well as increase the conversion rate of visitors into returning customers.