Create A Website That Generates Leads & Revenue

There are a million reasons you want to redesign your website. Maybe it’s to keep up with the competition or it’s looking really outdated or it’s just in the budget every few years. Before you spend the money, make sure it’s for the right reasons.

This really isn’t about you. Your website exists for your consumers to use, not your team. So a redesign should be driven by their needs and preferences, not yours.  You need a site built for your buyer personas, with a strategy designed to serve them, as you work toward measurable business goals such as sales, leads, and profit.

At Real Monkey, our data-driven approach to website redesign begins with a deep dive into your current site. If what you have isn’t working for you anymore, we want to know why. That information fuels the strategy we use to make your site a success.

Site after site, our team is able to take tired, old websites and transform them into lead-generating powerhouses. We do it by focusing on the strategy behind the design, not just re-skinning the same information.

A website redesign is your golden opportunity to re-strategize and recharges your online marketing efforts with powerful tools and more effective information. Don’t let it be anything less.

By sharing our team’s approach to website redesign, we hope to show more brands the potential and possibilities these projects have for overhauling their online marketing. A redesign can be so much more than a new look. It can reinvent the way you do business. Why settle for less?

It’s time to redesign your website if:

• Your site doesn’t deliver results, and you’re wondering why
• Your website is so old that it is not accurate and even embarrassing.
• You think you need a new customized website solution to meet your business goals rather than a template website.
• Due to major changes in your business your website no longer represents your company accurately.

80% of consumers say the experience your company provides is as important as the products or services you sell — including the experience they have with your website.

7 key steps to redesign your website

With our experience in website redesign, we work with our clients to follow these steps for redesigning a website. This step-by-step approach will help you to define a road map to redesign your website.

1. Analyze the “old” website

Start by looking critically at your current design — the “old” website. What’s working? What’s not?

More than likely, you’ve already identified specific problems. Maybe you’re experiencing frequently abandoned shopping carts on your e-commerce site, for instance. In that case, you might need to revamp and redesign the checkout process to encourage follow-through.

Using Google Analytics, study traffic patterns. Do you have a high bounce rate? Which pages receive the most frequent and fastest bounces?

Using visual reports like heat maps or scroll maps to analyze the behavior of your website visitors can also help you identify potential problem areas. For instance, you might have calls to action placed too close together or limited activity on important areas of your website, such as email signup forms.

Recordings can provide even more in-depth information about website visitors’ activities on specific pages. You can see where they scroll, click, and otherwise interact with your site.

2. Define and update the website’s target audience

Target audiences evolve over time. As you add new products or services to your website or expand into new markets, you must update your messaging to the people who are most able and willing to buy from you.

Create buyer personas for each of your target demographics (sets of individual characteristics for consumers) or firmographics (information about B2B clients).

Knowing how to appeal to those target audience members will help you make smart decisions as you recalibrate your website redesign. For instance, if you’re now targeting Millennials, you might want to create a more youthful, colorful site than if you were just marketing to middle-aged professionals.

3. Find out what is working on the current website

You don’t have to change everything during a website redesign. In fact, you shouldn’t.

Some aspects of your site probably work very well. For instance, if you’re happy with your current logo and it’s received widespread brand recognition, you probably won’t want to change it.

The same might go for the site’s color palette, font choices, or photographs. Based on hard data from Google Analytics and other tools, you can decide what you want to keep and what could use adjustments.

4. Have a look at your competitors’ websites

Competitive analysis is the next step to follow. Spend time researching your competitors' websites and other leading ones. Think innovative and get new ideas that go with yours. Based on your evaluation, start working on your websites to make them better than that of your competitors. Redesign your website for quick navigation and faster loading.

5. Create a list of desired design changes

Think of this step as a wish list. Write down every feature you want to add to your website, whether it’s a color change or a new tool for your audience.

Make note of any structural changes you might prefer for your site. For instance, we often recommend removing the date from blog posts. Instead of a URL that looks like this:

examplesite.com/2018/06/20/website-redesign

You might be better off with a shorter, cleaner URL:

examplesite.com/website-redesign

Do you want to add or remove anything from your navigation lists or sidebar? Are you interested in creating new landing pages? Add those to your list.

6. Define the new goals

Each of the items on your wishlist should have a reason behind it. Do you want a more complex top navigation bar? Maybe your users have trouble finding the content they need, so you need to give them ways to locate information faster.

Some of the items on your list might not have an associated goal or reason. Put a question mark next to them so you’ll know to test them against variations.

I always recommend data-based changes because you get more mileage after your website redesign and you don’t have to redesign your site as frequently.

7. Start building the website redesign plan

Whether you’re redesigning your site yourself or hiring a professional design team, you need a timeline. Figure out when each element of the redesign will occur and whether or not you will test those changes against variations.

If you’re hiring a design agency, appoint someone from your team to approve all changes systematically. For third-party contracts, make sure you spell out all expectations in the contract and know exactly what you’re getting, such as the number of free revisions and the cost of adding extras later on.

Spend more time building your website redesign strategy than the redesign itself.

To conclude, if you make a proper analysis and develop a website redesigning strategy based on these guidelines, you could easily propel your business forward and obtain desired results with your newly redesigned website.

Thinking About A Website Redesign?

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