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Did you know that almost 50% of visitors believe that website design is crucial in judging a brand’s visibility? Your website is often the first impression potential customers have of your organization, so it’s important to get it right. If your site is outdated aesthetically or, more importantly, lacks the functionality you need, it’s probably time to consider redesigning it. 

A website redesign involves more than just giving it a facelift—it’s an essential part of regular website maintenance. Today, we’ll discuss what a website redesign is, how often it should be done, and give an overview of the redesign process.

What Is A Website Redesign?

Website redesigns go far beyond just changing color schemes or mixing up the graphics on your site. A redesign encompasses fully auditing and updating your website’s content, navigation, and user experience to improve overall performance. 

Here are four ways that redesigning your website can help your organization: 

Keeps company info up-to-date: Often, business owners may not realize just how much their services and offerings have changed, and how outdated their website may be. Regularly updating your site ensures that potential customers get the right information, the first time.

Boost conversions and sales: Ultimately, you want your website to convert leads into customers. Website redesigns are a great way to aid your organization’s conversion rate optimization (CRO), ultimately helping increase your revenue per visitor and acquire more customers. An effective CRO strategy for a website redesign involves creating positive UX design as well as some SEO principles like ensuring quick page load speed and mobile optimization.

Improves security: It’s crucial for organizations to maintain security of both their private data and their users’. Undergoing a website redesign allows you to look thoroughly into your site’s code base, ensuring it is secure and up-to-date. Does your website have a current SSL certificate? Are all the plugins powering your site being used and regularly maintained? If you’re not sure of the answer to these questions, a redesign may be a good option for you.

Financial benefits: With your website being the first impression of your brand, it’s important to make sure that what you invest in it is well spent. It can be expensive to keep throwing time and money into short-term solutions that don’t ultimately solve the core problems your organization is facing. Doing a full-scale website redesign allows you to improve your site’s user experience, helping to convert visitors into loyal customers.

Refresh vs. Redesign

If you’re looking at making changes to your site, the first step is deciding between a refresh or a complete website redesign project. While a website redesign is a complete overhaul of your site, a website refresh involves making minor updates to your site without changing the structure. Here are a few ways to decide between the two:

 

Current website performance

If your existing website still functions well but needs some minor tweaks, a refresh may work for you. If you need more complex changes such as updating technical aspects on the backend, a website redesign is probably the better choice.

Visual differences

Depending on how drastic of a change you’re looking to make visually, you may need a complete overhaul. Certain aspects of a website’s theme are usually hard-coded, and a few major code changes can add up quickly. In some cases, it may be more cost-effective to opt for a full redesign.

Budget and time

A website refresh is typically a more cost-effective option than a redesign. Refreshes also take less time on average to implement than a total overhaul. 

Business goals

Considering your business goals is an important part of the website overhaul process. If your current site aligns with your business goals but needs some minor changes, opt for a refresh. If your organization is undergoing significant branding or messaging changes, a redesign is probably necessary. 

How Often Should You Redesign Your Website? 

Honestly, website redesigns aren’t one-size-fits-all. While the industry standard is to redesign your website every 2-3 years, how often you should be redesigning your website depends on various factors. However, some signals that indicate that your site would benefit from a redesign include:

  • Your organization’s offering has changed. As your products and services change, so should your website. Pay special attention to your homepage, which should offer visitors a summary of your organization and guide users through the buyer’s journey.
  • Your site’s design is outdated. Having a visually appealing, easy-to-navigate website helps cultivate trust with your audience. If your site’s design is more than five years old, it’s likely outdated aesthetically. Or, if you’ve recently rebranded, a website redesign ensures that your audience sees the most up-to-date information. 
  • Your site doesn’t offer an excellent user experience. A good user experience should support prospects as they explore what you have to offer. Your site’s visitors want to have a seamless experience on your site and be able to find what they’re looking for easily — and they won’t hesitate to leave if they don’t. This is just one reason it’s absolutely critical to regularly evaluate your site’s performance with data. If you notice visitors dropping off more quickly or a decrease in engagement, you may have a serious UX problem on your hands.
  • Your site isn’t technically sound. Factors like site speed, image sizes, and other technical components also affect the success of your site. The technical aspects of your site can dramatically affect the experience your website’s visitors have. In many cases, a full website redesign is the best solution for code-based technical issues.

The Website Redesign Process

Most organizations don’t have the in-house talent to execute a website redesign or refresh.  While every website redesign is unique and different web redesign agencies’ approaches will vary, there are a few nonnegotiable steps to follow. Here are four steps for a successful website redesign:

1. Research:

The research phase begins with diving deep into your organization. It’s important to think about your story, messaging, strengths, and weaknesses. An integral part of the research phase involves site analysis. You’ll want to perform an in-depth digital analysis on your site, looking into overall traffic, engagement rates, bounce rates, and more. This helps give you a full picture of how your current site is performing. After you’ve done a site analysis, you can begin thinking of goals for your new site. Setting clear goals helps save your organization time and money and ensures that the redesign process goes smoothly.

2. Design and content:

During the design phase, you’ll begin looking at your site’s structure and user experience. Whoever is building your site will likely create medium-fidelity wireframes and stylescapes for you to look at before moving further in the process. Throughout this stage, you’ll want to focus on your content’s hierarchy, overall site layout, and your organization’s content strategy to ensure everything is aligned with your goals.

3. Building and testing:

During the build and test phase, your website redesign team will spend time building your new site behind the scenes based on your approved concepts and goals. They’ll also perform testing to identify any issues or bugs with your new site’s functionality or usability to ensure a seamless user experience before it’s live. 

4. Launch:

After all the hard work has been completed, it’s time for the most exciting part of the process — launching your new site. You’ll take one last review of your new site in its entirety and then it’s time for go-live! After your site is up and running, you may run some post-live tests like speed tests and code tweaks to make sure your new site is running properly.

A web redesign is a significant project to undertake, and it can be tough to navigate alone. Partnering with a proven agency like 434 Marketing gives you an experienced team, giving you peace of mind your project will be completed the right way the first time. Learn more about our approach!

Redesigning Your Site Is A Big Undertaking, But Our Expert Team Is Here At Every Step Of The Journey.

At 434, we understand that planning a website redesign can feel overwhelming. That’s why our team takes the time to understand you and your audience deeply, ensuring that your site is tailored to your unique business goals. 

Ready to take the next step? Our team has over 12 years of experience in creating custom websites that work for you.

 

Brianna Arnold

Brianna Arnold holds the role of Content Manager at 434 Marketing. As part of the 434 team, Brianna brings with her a career of experience in the agency world. She is responsible for ensuring client goals are achieved with measurable success. Brianna's digital marketing experience spans a myriad of skills,..

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