So, you thought website design didn’t play any role in selling more? Well, think twice. On this article, I’ll show you how to boost your conversion rate with a proper website redesign.
Website redesign strategies are some of the most effective ways to increase your sales and visitors for your online store. As a company in an online market, the style and message you are conveying through your website’s layout and design are important to maintain.
The usability and ease of the user experience is a huge factor in determining the number of customers a website has. Additionally, a website interface that communicates brand identity effectively and is designed to look professional and credible adds factors into the trust your audiences have towards your company.
The first step of a website redesign process is identifying if it is time to change your website’s look. The next step would be identifying how much you need to change and the most effective strategies you can employ to reach your new goals.
This article will cover these three steps to get you started on redesigning your website in 2020.
The first step to a website redesign project plan is first identifying what strategies work and what needs to be improved. However, as trends change and consumer preferences evolve there might be things that you need to completely let go of.
There are a few signs that would indicate that your website is due for a renovation. The common factor of all the signs is that your online business is not doing so well in terms of sales and traffic.
This may be due to a number of reasons such as your website’s inability to communicate your brand’s identity, outdated designs, or even accessibility issues for customers and visitors.
The list below will discuss what signs and causes you to need to watch out for in order to optimize your website’s design and functionality.
Declined sales could be caused by the decreasing traffic of your website or the loss of loyal customers. This may also be caused by lower conversion rates. This essentially means that your website visitors fail to complete a purchase or convert to actual purchasing customers.
This may be due to the inability of a visitor to find what they want or need on your website. Declined sales through decreasing traffic may also be caused by not meeting your target audience’s preference. Whatever the reason may be, a website redesign can help mitigate these occurrences and help you maintain relevance.
Website design has the ability to make the customer experience easier and more effective in increasing conversion rates. Once you have pinpointed the causes of your declining sales, it is easier to move forward in strategizing the next steps on your website redesign plan.
New trends and popular website designs constantly change. This means that a website redesign plan must include a long term overview where you constantly explore the newest trends and designs. At the least, you should be aware of the latest trends.
Outdated website design can be the reason for your decreasing sales and traffic.
If you have answered “no” to more than one of these questions, then it is time for you to explore a website redesign project plan.
Regardless if you are a start-up or an established company, it is always a goal for your business to maximize your return on investments. An increasing or maintained monthly traffic can translate to more customers and increased sales.
Website design just as it can affect your sales can help you increase monthly traffic. The absence of website maintenance and redesign has a direct impact on customers. Perhaps a potential customer cannot find what they need on your website. Or maybe your top competitors are employing the latest market strategies and you are not. Regardless of the reason, decreasing monthly traffic can be addressed by a website redesign.
Accessibility and ease are two things you should strive for in the customer experience on your website. As stated above, if a customer or a potential buyer fails to find what they are looking for in your site, they will leave and look for it elsewhere.
Complaints in design-related issues may also be related to unresponsive links or empty pages. Perhaps your website is loaded with too many walls of texts or low-quality photos and videos are uploaded.
Design related issues can easily turn-off potential customers. This is why easy navigation through clear and intuitive designs are so important in today’s online market.
As mentioned above, the first step to a website redesign process is identifying what you need to improve, maintain, or forgo. If you have hired a professional web design agency then they can easily find a suitable website redesign for you. Once this is set, it is important to establish your goals as well as comprehensive strategies you can act on in order to maximize the benefits out of a well-designed website.
Website redesign cost will depend on your goals and exactly how many aspects of your website you need to work on. It is a no-brainer fact that the more things you need to do for your website the more expensive it would be. However, this might not always be the case.
Identifying the best kind of website redesign strategy you need can actually be both cost-effective and extremely beneficial for your overall sales and online traffic.
Below are two different routes you can take depending on your identified goals to help you get started with your website redesign RFP.
A drastic or complete website redesign is also known as radical or traditional website redesign methods. This entails a complete renovation and replacement of old website components with drastically new ones.
A drastic website redesign process would entail changes on your website’s landing page, site copy, CTA button, header, and other elements.
The benefits of a drastic or complete website redesign revolve around how concrete it can be in terms of plans and marketing strategies to improve your website. This type of method is especially effective if you have a huge bank of information and research on customer preferences and target audience behaviors.
A drastic and complete website redesign most effective for websites that are absolutely outdated and stuck in a rut of almost no traffic and customers. This is usually the best option for businesses that entered the online market with very little information to start. This type of method could be the first one for a website owner to consider once sales start to drop. However, it is best to educate yourself on other plausible options and the drawback you might experience with a complete website redesign.
Because this website redesigning method is extremely comprehensive and is usually done in one go, it will require a larger but one-time payment. Aside from its tendency to get expensive, here is a list of cons to this method:
The evolutionary Site redesign method is described to be iterative and includes small incremental improvements to a website. This means that this type of method ensures tangible increases in sales through trials and tests of different website designs.
This type of method of website redesign planning is done over a long period of time when you change and improve different aspects of your website. Evolutionary Site Redesign allows ample time for customers and visitors to respond to new changes.
This strategy is extremely effective because you are able to be as targeting and specific with your improvements. Even if they are small improvements, there is more guarantee in changes under an evolutionary site redesign that would yield tangible and sure results.
Here are some benefits of employing an Evolutionary Site Redesign method for your next website redesign plan:
These two different methods can be useful to consider and research if you are looking for ways on how to redesign a website a process.
But which one is the best option that will guarantee long term results?
The truth is, Radical or Drastic Website redesign methods can do more harm than good for companies. This is because there is no testing period or room for dynamic changes in the marketing strategy. Additional changes after the redesign would mean more costs for you.
An evolutionary redesign is actually better at making sure your website is performing well and effectively caters to the needs and wants of your customers and visitors.
The following list is some reasons Evolutionary Redesign is most effective in website redesign SEO.
Although a complete overhaul is possible through a radical or complete website redesign, increasing conversion rates is not a guarantee.
As listed above, it takes years to develop a completely new website design. Additionally, you cannot test customer response and reactions in a radical or complete website redesign.
ESR on the other hand is a slow and incremental process of improvement that allows you to test and monitor customer response, user experience, site readability, and navigation, as well as other sections of your website.
Because of incremental improvements done over time in an evolutionary site redesign method, you are able to focus on specific aspects of your website. In this method, you are able to zero in on the actual effects of each change you make on your website.
Aside from this, your improvements are measurable. You can evaluate how your audience reacts and responds to the changes you make through split testing.
Perhaps one of the most desirable and ideal guarantees of the ESR method is improved user experience. Yes, it is important for your website to look and feel professional. However, efficient functions, easy searches, and overall seamless website navigation is far more important for the actual user experience.
Since ESR is concerned with specific incremental improvements, your website redesign team will be able to focus on the things that actually help improve user experience.
Additionally, you are able to continue sales without having to go completely offline when employing an ESR method. It also gives your customers the chance to ease in and get used to new changes since the improvements are done step by step. This lessens the risk of customer issues related to readjustment or re-learning how to navigate your website.
This means you get results faster in an ESR method. Individual changes can be done on the website simultaneously without tampering on the other parts of your website.
Part of doing a revolutionary site redesign is the risk of total customer rejection. It is kind of a hit or miss when it comes to optimizing your website to best fit your consumer preference. ESR will make sure you are able to work your way to providing the best customer experience on your website because you are able to do incremental changes rather than one major makeover without.Redesigning an Existing Website.
Now that you are aware of the different routes you can take for your next website redesign plan, the next step is to pave the way for the actual process to start.
Regardless of what method of website redesign you decide to employ, it is important to get several things done before you do so. Before we dive into the specific tasks you need to do, it is important to examine why exactly you want or need to.
Below important reminders and tasks you need to do before you start your new website redesign project.
Once you have a clear picture of your goals, it is time for you to document everything. This essentially means having a backup of your website prior to making any major changes. This also means having to take not of your current metrics before you make any changes.
It is important to do so to help you recreate the SEO work that you have already done for your existing website. It is also a good idea to keep copies of all your existing content. From articles, blog posts, pictures, videos, and downloadable reports.
Do take note of all your current metrics and insights. This will help you assess improvements on your website once changes have been done. Knowing your website metrics can also give you a starting point or at the very least, specific numbers for you to maintain once you have started making changes.
Here are some tips in documenting your insights before starting on your website redesign plan:
Once you have decided to go ahead and redesign your website, and after you have documented everything on your end, you may start on the next part of the website redesigning plan.
How will you go about redesigning your existing website?
Below are important things to consider when redesigning your existing website.
If you are versed in the website redesigning and your website only needs a few minor changes that you feel comfortable with, there is no problem in doing this on your own. If not, you can always turn to your in-house talents to help you with the website redesign.
However, if you are a relatively young startup or even if you are comfortable in making these redesigns on your own, professional opinion and assistance are always beneficial. Hiring a professional would free up your time and hands to focus on other important aspects of your business.
A professional can also help you make sense of website analytics and give you insights on what market strategies are being done by the current market.
Additionally, website redesign services and professional freelancers will ensure that you are able to achieve your goals on time. Basically paid professional help will make sure that you are on schedule with your improvements and that you are able to see results with each step of the redesigning process.
As mentioned previously in the article, it is important to understand why you are doing a website redesign in the first place. Part of this is redesigning your marketing strategy as a whole.
Strategies can range from increasing traffic, decreasing bounce rates, or increase loyalty among existing customers.
These strategies may vary depending on how well your website is performing or what things you have identified you want to be improved on your website. Regardless of what these strategies may be. It is important to lay them out and prioritize those that need to be done as soon as possible.
Once you have a clear list of market strategies you wish to employ, the next step is to develop a plan for each.
The plan must be realistic, specific, time-bound, and measurable.
As mentioned above, part of preparing yourself for a website redesign plan is getting to know which parts of your website works well for you and which are in dire need of improvement.
This can be easily done by browsing your old website as if you were a visitor. Test all the links and pages- is everything working as they should?
Read through all your content and articles- is everything grammatically sound and updated with the latest information?
Analyzing your old website would also entail looking through the insights and analytics on each of your active pages. Understanding and documenting these things will give you a good idea of what pages you need to improved or what content you can replicate or refurbish to get more visitors.
It is important to have a stylish website that looks professional, credible, and trendy. However, this should not be the top priority when considering a website redesign.
Making sure your website design is optimized in all of its functionalities and is easy to navigate should be on the top of your priority. This is because things like this add to the actual customer experience which greatly factors in how well your conversion rates are or how well you are able to retain loyal customers.
Identifying your priorities based on your metrics, imagined buyer personas, and your overall strategy will help you become more focused on the goals that you want to achieve for your website.
This will also specify the metrics that you need to analyze when you conduct testings for your new designs.
As mentioned above, your website needs to be able to effectively communicate and appeal to your target audiences. Hence, establishing a buyer persona is extremely important.
What exactly does this mean?
Buyer personas are basically imagined groups of people that you think your current customers or visitors are. It includes being aware of simple demographics like age, gender, nationality, etc.
Establishing buyer personas also includes getting to know what their preferences are through other social media platforms. Preferences can be as simple as what type of images and videos they prefer, what color schemes they are most likely to respond to. This could also be more extensive as figuring out what voice and tone they prefer your brand to use.
Getting to know the common communities they are part of online is also part of imagining your buyer or customer persona. Knowing which communities they are part of in different social media platforms can not only help you in strategizing for your website redesign but also help you in your overall market strategy. This is because you become aware of where exactly your target audiences like to hang out online.
As mentioned above it is important to keep a record of current information, content, and metrics of your blog. Part of this documentation is understanding which parts and aspects of your website are working and should be retained. Additionally, this also means figuring out what you need to get rid of from your website.
Revisit the list from earlier pages for the tips on proper documentation of existing elements of your website.
On number 2 of this list, we talked about listing your strategies, and on number four we talked about prioritizing tasks and redesign plans on that list.
Now it is time to find inspiration on how exactly you would go about your plans. Having a vision for your new website design is important. Go through your list again and explore designs and functionalities from other successful websites that you want to embody on your own site.
What elements of your website design do you want to have changed? Is it the structure? The color palette? Perhaps it is the tone and vibes your website communicates to your customers and potential buyers.
This is the time for you to think of creative ways you can maximize web functionalities and its aesthetic design for your website redesign plan.
The online market is incredibly vast and chances are, there are a couple of businesses out there that offer the same products and services as you do to the same target audience.
As the saying goes, you learn more from your enemies than your friends. So get to learning!
Identify your top competitors and see what they are doing in terms of improving sales through website design. Look for website functions that can be borrowed or elements that you can need to improve.
One thing to remember when browsing through your competition is how you can improve your content or website design to be the more desirable option for your target audience?
Make sure that your website is able to offer your target audiences the better option whether it may be through faster loading times, easier navigation, or through aesthetic designs.
This tip basically is just encouraging you to be organized with the goals you set and the steps you take to reach those goals. It is important to have an action tracker before you or your team even starts the website redesign plan.
As much as this can get taxing to complete, having a clear action plan tracker will help you get organized in implementing all your tasks. This would also reap benefits for you and your team as tasks can be clearly designated, updated, and analyzed all in one master tracker.
This will ensure that you are able to get tasks and redesigns done even if they are not at the top of your priorities.
Having this action plan tracker would also help you evaluate how your customers and visitors respond to the changes you make.
Wireframes and mockups will allow you to view and test changes before you make them live for your audience to use. This is especially helpful in seeing mistakes or elements to improve on that might have been outside your vision during your creating process.
Grid styles are also preferred by most people. This is because things are organized and symmetrical.
Do be aware of making sure your website does not look boring.
It is important that there are easily identifiable elements on your website that can be seen throughout all your pages. This will help strengthen your brand identity across different online platforms. These elements would also help signal to your customers and visitors that they are viewing your brand’s website or account.
A standardized look across different online platforms adds to your brand’s credibility and professionalism more than anything else.
When evaluating your mock-up experiment with elements and designs that you want to have appeared on all your pages. Perhaps specific words, colors, or pictures that would appear or evolve in each of the pages to better the overall audience journey.
When starting your new design, be critical of your website’s text placements, image quality, and size, as well as text readability.
Redesigning your website can help increase your sales tremendously. As long as you are able to set a clear plan of action and timeline based on existing issues and newfound goals, you are sure to reap benefits.
Do remember having a substantial amount of data and information about your website metrics and customer preferences is an important prerequisite to website redesign.
Once you have all these things considered for your website redesigning project, by this time you must have an idea if you are going to hire a professional to help you actualize your plans.
If so, this next section is for you.
The basic key elements of good website redesign RFP are well-communicated goals, details, and company background all these can be added within the website redesign proposal.
Now that you are set with paving the way for your next website redesign process, it is time to find inspiration and direction. There are plenty of things you might want to have changed or improved in your current websites. These things may depend on your new goals and objectives as a business or by your target audience preferences.
Regardless of what these may be, it is important to educate yourself with tried and tested ways and improvements that are sure to deliver real results for any website redesign.
Here is a list of goals, tips, and tasks worth adding on your website redesign RFP!
Your market strategy for your business may change over time. However, what happens when you have to collect new information to build your next market strategy? More importantly, how will this even relate to your website redesign plan?
You can easily generate new leads by incorporating several products or content in your website redesign. The trick is to provide your customers and visitors with clickable or downloadable content on strategic pages.
Incorporating content that can be potential leads to your new website design would give you information on what your customers or visitors are looking for.
As mentioned previously in this article, increasing ease and accessibility in the overall user experience is highly important. As much as you want your website to look aesthetically pleasing, it should be simple enough to navigate.
The newest visitors should be able to find what they are looking for without much struggle.
Make sure that your contents are readable, well-spaced out, relevant and timely to what your target audience is concerned with.
Your home page might also be the first page a potential customer would see. Meaning it is the page that determines your entire brand’s first impression. This is why it is important to keep your home page simple without compromising your aesthetic goals and website functionalities.
Strong visuals and fewer walls of texts are always a good idea to help catch user attention. Strong visuals that are compelling and engaging are great strategies to help boost your sales or simply advertise specific products on your website.
Videos are especially effective in enticing potential customers and placing them in strategic places can help multiply your sales.
Videos especially demonstrations of actual products in use or to showcase a specific item are some examples of videos you can upload on your key conversion pages.
Custom videos that are original also give more personality to your website and overall brand identity.
A great way to reconnect with site visitors that did not convert to actual customers is by sending them email promotions. One way to do this is to incorporate ways to capture email addresses into your website redesign.
Examples of such strategies include taking advantage of upgraded content offers. Say you have an article or a checklist. Allow audiences exclusive content upgrades by giving them the option to have the upgrade emailed to them.
Testimonials, associations, and case studies all have the effect of increasing your credibility in the eyes of your target audiences.
Showcasing product testimonials would encourage visitors to purchase especially if you are able to communicate authenticity in each testimonial you feature.
Associations also do this by riding the authority or popularity of another brand.
Perhaps you have identified a new target audience or there is a segment that you want to tap or strengthen your relationship with.
Content designed and created specifically for these identified market segments are effective in achieving your goals.
The process of identifying what content would work and what presentation would be most desirable can be improved if you are already aware of your customer or buyer persona.
A blog is perhaps one of the best and most cost-effective ways you can create content for your readers. Getting rid of ads or unnecessary information would play a huge part in helping you boost your current online sales.
There have been multiple studies that reveal the desire of customers to actually read content – not ads. This also has a lot to do with increasing accessibility and ease for your users.
Building a blog will ensure that your customers and potential buyers would find exactly what they are looking for in a shorter amount of time. This lessens the risk of losing visitors to your competitors.
Have you ever thought about how your brand is seen by your customers or potential visitors? Do you think they are able to identify or link your website to your actual brand?
Personalizing your website is one sure way you can ensure your brand identity is well-communicated to your audiences.
The tone and personality of your content should be standardized across all your online platforms. Even the tone and voice of your customer service, emails, and notifications should be the same.
Additionally, fonts, color palettes, images, logos, and overall designs should be standardized as well.
This is a simple way to encourage customers to perform actions on your website. Contrasting colors can easily catch the attention of potential customers and entice them to complete an action.
Highlighting important information or changing the colors of different clickable elements of your website would encourage users to click or view the item you want them to.
Aside from contrasting colors, moving or dynamic elements would also help catch your viewer’s attention. Do use sparingly as this can be distracting for some users.
Using contrasting colors on your website can also help with the total readability and accessibility of your website.
If you are not already aware, upselling is a selling strategy where a seller invites a customer to purchase a more expensive or upgraded product.
Incorporating upselling in your website redesign can potentially increase your sales when done right. The trick is to provide information on the upgraded product next to key specs of the product they are originally interested in.
This would help them compare the products side by side and increase the chances of them purchasing the upgrade.
Live chats are especially useful in having an effective and reliable customer service. This would also make sure that there is a sales representative that a potential customer can turn to all throughout their purchasing process.
A live chat has the power to improve the overall customer experience and give your site users the feeling of being assisted and cared for even if they are shopping on an online or virtual platform.
This would help increase conversion rates in the long run.
This trick is similar to the first tip of this list. Landing pages, as mentioned earlier in this list have the power to build your first impression on the consumers. But most importantly they can be your highest page for user conversion if optimized.
Create and test out multiple designs featuring different offers and see what type of content is most relevant and preferred by your target audience. This can easily be done by doing test runs and monitoring customer behavior on each page. Once these tests are done you can incorporate the best performing content into your new website design.
When redesigning your website, make sure to include customer objections and issues in your list of priorities. More often than not, customer satisfaction is one of the biggest factors affecting a company’s sales.
Make sure that these objections are addressed and incorporated into your website redesign strategy. In fact, these issues may be the most ideal place to start in your whole redesigning process.
Search Engine Optimization or SEO is one of the cheapest ways to boost your online sales. This is because when our content is well optimized for search engines, you are able to access organic reach.
Content, sales copies, product descriptions, and other parts of your website can be SEO to help with your site’s visibility on search pages.
Below is a simple checklist to optimize your entire website for SEO:
SEO on your website should be done regularly as part of your website maintenance as this greatly affects your website’s ranking on search pages. If you keep a well SEO optimized website, you are able to organically appear on the front end of search pages.
A/B split testing is essentially a controlled form of testing where you are able to identify which versions of websites perform the best for your website’s goals. This is especially helpful in assessing the best strategy if you have multiple options to chose from.
A/B testing is the heart of the ESR method and the more tests you perform, the more specific and focused your optimization process becomes.
A/B testing through the ESR method would ensure that your next steps in your website redesign plan are backed up with data and actual insights rather than gut-feel or intuition.
A great way to maximize the benefits of your next website redesign is to make your website mobile-friendly. The truth is, the chances of your potential customer using a mobile phone to navigate through your site at this very moment is higher than those browsing on a computer or laptop.
Making your website mobile-friendly will increase the accessibility of your site for users. It is ideal for your site to function and look seamlessly on any device. But if you are made to choose, make sure that your website is mobile-friendly first.
RSS stands for really simple syndication. This will help ensure that your website content and information are SEO optimized.
RSS in your new website redesign would help ensure that your customers and site visitors are made aware of new content you post. This can potentially increase engagement and post-interaction per customer as they are given more options and content to browse through.
A website redesign can be a tedious but exciting process. Some important considerations to remember are what website redesigning method is best for you, and whether or not you will seek professional assistance.
It is also highly important for you to get to know your target audience and be responsive to their preference. Getting information about this through analytics and site metrics is a prerequisite before you can start on your website redesign plan.
Whatever your choice would be in starting your website redesigning process, do keep this in mind: What are your goals as an online business, and how do you plan on achieving them?