Website Redesign Why?

It is obvious that websites needs continuous improvement. Just browse your site and discover the sites that are looking old and obsolete. But there are many other reasons to redesign your site. Some of them are not obvious but are at the core cause of the site.

Following are the steps which will help you to redesign a website according to your audience’s needs and changing perceptions. It is no longer good enough to have a static website. It must capture their attention, have new information, and engage the visitor or ’adios’ they are off to your competitor’s site.

Website Redesign Checklist

EVALUATE EXISTING SITE

What are the success and failures of your existing site? Get an honest evaluation of your existing site. Pickup five successes and five failures. Then write down your goals for the development of new site.

BRAINSTORMING

What are new and fresh issues are missing? Brainstorm with a team of people to get fresh ideas. Write down five ideas that came from the brainstorming.

WHY PEOPLE VISIT YOUR SITE

Which all people are visiting your site? Generally they are coming for information or are in need of your company’s product or service but there can be many other reasons. List five reasons.

DOES IT GRAB ATTENTION?

Do you think visitors remember your site? Does it have something new that gets attention.? If he/she does not bookmark your site what will get them back? You should give your visitor something to remember so that he can find his way back to your site.

RESEARCH COMPETITORS

Try to learn from your competitors? Get ideas about the latest web design, technology and communication concepts by looking analytically at competitor sites.

TARGET AUDIENCE

Who is the target audience? Decide whom you want to target with the site. Try and get into their shoes and think like they think. What are their needs or points of interest? List the top five categories of people. Write one-sentence descriptions of different people in your target audience. Then write a few words that might interest these people and cause them to respond to your site.

THEME AND LOOK AND FEEL

Decide on the overall theme and "look and feel" of the site. For example: humor, professional, academic, family, technical, etc.

CONTENT

This is probably why most people come to your site. They come to read your content. It should be clear and well written. The Redesigning requires having several outsiders read your content to see if it is clear, up-to-date, accurate and communicates what it is supposed to.

TRUST AND CREDIBILITY

What will make your visitor believe you? A quality site that does what it says it is going to do will help. Also well-written content adds credibility. List a person, company or product that can be associated with your site to add trust and credibility.

KEEP SEARCH ENGINES IN MIND

Redesign your site keeping search engines in mind? Decide on keywords. This is a new concept that really only applies to redesigning or developing new websites. It may not even apply to all websites, but to those who are depending on search engines this is an important point. The concept is to get good rankings on search engines with different keywords.

ANALYZE POPULARITY OF PAGES

Look at your site statistics and carefully examine the popularity of the pages. You may need to redesign the site so that the pages that you want visited are the most popular. There will always be pages at the bottom of the list but your goal should be to make sure that the important pages are not at the bottom. Changing keywords etc. can boost some of these pages.

ANALYZE VISITORS’ ACTIONS

Are your visitors coming back and are they spending time at your site? If your visitors are not returning or they are only spending a few seconds at your site then something is wrong. A good site statistics program or service will help you know what your visitors are doing.

NAVIGATION

As a first generation site grows it often outgrows its navigation. A good redesign will help. The new design needs careful thought so that the visitor will not get lost or be more than two clicks away from what he/she needs.

PERSONAL INTEREST

Do you have a place where visitors can find out what is behind the scenes? Some people may want to know who is behind this website. What does their office look like? Revealing this can help build trust and credibility Consider posting a company newsletter or short biographies about employees.

FRESH NEWS

Do your visitors feel they are visiting an active site? Sitting in a doctor’s waiting room with old newspapers might make you wonder about the competence of the doctor. In the same way, visiting a site that was last updated in 1996 is a sure way to lose visitor trust. When redesigning the website build in ways to keep it fresh, but keep in mind that publishing dates can work against you. Don’t create too much extra work for yourself unless you are a workaholic.

PRODUCT AND SERVICE INFORMATION

Are you making it easy for your customers to do business with you? Can they find what they need quickly? Can they respond easily? Your job in redesigning a website is to make things easy for visitors and customers. Carefully think through what a customer needs to do to get what he needs. Is it clear and simple? Eliminate unnecessary steps.

INFORMATION

Is you adding value to your visitor? To keep your visitors returning it is important to think of how you can serve him rather than what can my company get from him. This is one of the major shifts in thinking on the Internet. A printed brochure transferred to the Internet might be OK but serving your customer/visitor is better.

INTERACTION

Can your visitors exchange information with you? If you sell a product can the customer find out how the order is progressing? Can he/she easily get a question answered? This type of interaction is making life easier for everyone.

COLLABORATION

Collaboration is one of the most important advantages being discovered on the Internet. It is very common for visitors to a site to have as much or more knowledge on the subject than the experts behind the site. Collaboration between visitors can add a lot of value to your visitor’s experience. Discussion forums all this exchange of information. If this information is archived it can be a good pool of information for future visitors.

SPEED

What needs to be compromised for the sake of speed? Site speed and server speed is the major bottleneck on the Internet. Only so much information can travel through a small phone line. This is what limits the size of pictures, amount of sound, and many other aspects of the Internet. In redesigning a site this is an all-pervading thought. It is the rare exception when the visitor will wait for a site to load. Consider the size of every piece of the site and determine if it can be made smaller or eliminated.

GRAPHICS AND ANIMATION

Are the graphics able to load fast? Do the graphics communicate a concept? A website redesign should involve an evaluation and possible redevelopment of graphics and photos.

CUSTOMERS TO DO BUSINESS WITH YOU

Do know what your customer is thinking? When redesigning a website it would be helpful to know as much as possible about how your customer is responding to your site. Is he/she able to get all the information needed to make an informed decision? Are there too many steps involved in ordering or getting information?

RIGHT PEOPLE TO REDESIGN YOUR NEW WEBSITE

Re-design a website is best done with a team. A team can synergies their abilities and create a much better site. Your website is your signature. It is often the only way for people to evaluate who you are. Your profits depend on the quality of your site. Don’t regret a poor decision in choosing who redesigns your website.

Conclusion

While improving its operation and appearance, and meeting most of our original goals. We should conduct further testing to validate the changes made. However, given that we were satisfied with the results of the testing, and have made minor changes to address these changes, we had a degree of confidence that the new site represents an improvement, from a usability perspective, on the previous version.