As of July 2020, there are close over 1.5 billion websites in the world. That figure appears to be growing rapidly, resulting in stiff competition for traffic for active websites on the internet.
One way to stay ahead is to invest in a great website redesign. Redesigning websites is actually a huge undertaking, but it can make a huge difference in drawing and keeping more visitors to your business site.
The first and most important step in redesigning your website involves making a connection with the right digital agency to help you do the job. Check out this list of the best web design companies. During the first meeting, you need to ask the right questions to ensure whether your site really merits a full-blown redesign, or if you only need to change a few aspects. You also need to ask the right questions to ascertain whether the agency is the right fit for you.
In this comprehensive guide, outline seven essential questions to ask while thinking of a website redesign.
Essential Questions to Ask Before Redesigning Websites
There are many benefits of website redesigns, but you need to know whether it’s the right time to do the project or not. If more than one of the following questions applies to your case, then chances are it’s time to transform your current business website design and adopt a new one.
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1. Are You Changing Your Products or Services?
When your products or services are changing, or you’re introducing new ones, you may need to redesign your website to support these changes or new additions. For instance, if you run an eCommerce store that sells men’s clothing exclusively, and you decide to expand to include women’s clothing, you may need new website design ideas to accommodate these changes.
2. Has Your Target Audience Shifted?
There are many things that could cause a major shift in your target audience. These include a rebrand, a merger or acquisition, a new service or product launch, brand consolidation, and so on. Regardless of the cause, you may want to consider a website redesign.
You want your overall site structure to appeal to your target customers. Once your audience starts to change, it’s essential that you don’t keep your website stagnant. You’ll need to adjust your site’s appeal to fit your new audience, whether that means adopting a more effective CCM software to improve communication or generating more regular blog posts for your audience.
3. Can Everyone Access Your Website?
Giant search engines are continuously becoming more particular with the way websites are built. Google keeps making more algorithm updates and insists on mobile responsive design, and it’s essential that you adopt a website design that meets the standards laid down.
To be sure that your site meets accessibility standards, try using Google’s Lighthouse to perform a check on your website’s performance. The tool also recommends actions you can take to improve your site and points out any issues that might potentially hurt your SEO.
In case your site is failing, you can take necessary measures to improve its accessibility, which may mean redesigning the website. Keep in mind that creating an all-inclusive website is essential.
4. Is Your Site Secure?
Search engines care about the security of your website, and you should too. In the recent past, the number of internet hacks has increased significantly, and poor website design could make you vulnerable. You need to ensure that you’re hosting with a reputable partner, protecting your business website with a web application firewall, or using an SSL.
Over the years, browsers have been training internet users to distrust sites that don’t use SSL. If your website is labeled as insecure by browsers, you risk losing users.
5. Does Your Site Reach Your Business Goals?
Your business website needs to have a specific purpose. It could be aimed at driving conversions, generating revenue, or engaging and communicating with customers. Regardless of its purpose, your site should be supporting your larger business goals.
If you need your business site to generate leads, you should have the ability to test CTAs, text, photos, and videos. In case you’re looking to enhance trust and loyalty, you need to make sure that the site has interactive tools for people to use. Ultimately, your site needs to be designed in such a way that it serves a specific purpose in line with your overall business strategy.
6. Can Users Effortlessly Find What They Need?
Website speed doesn’t just relate to how well a website has been designed or developed. Although unoptimized images and lots of content can affect this, so can other factors like who your web host is. Top 10 Website Hosting has spent a lot of time signing up, researching, and testing affordable and reliable web hosts by analyzing their speeds, performance, and uptime.
User experience is essential in attracting and keeping users to your website. You need to make sure that users can easily get the answers they’re searching for on your website. Ultimately, a positive user experience helps you rank highly on search engine result pages (SERPs).
Your UX design has to do with how quickly users can access content, as well as such aspects as page load time. Failing to deliver great experience will ultimately lead to dismal user engagement metrics, poor organic performance, and higher bounce rates.
7. Is Your Website Mobile Responsive?
Internet users are increasingly accessing websites on their mobile devices. That’s why you need to focus on a website design that can deliver optimal viewing experience on smartphones and tablets. Such web design readily adjusts and responds to the screen size of the mobile device in use.
A site that isn’t responsive significantly affects mobile user experience. Such a site also performs more poorly on SERPs compared to responsive sites. Given that Google recommends that websites become responsive, it’s best to redesign your website to make it compliant.
8. What’s the Redesign Timeline?
This question has more to do with the agency you’re thinking of working with than your specific business website. As we pointed out earlier, a website redesign is not a simple job, and you need a realistic expectation of how long it’s going to take.
A standard project should take between three and four months. Beware of agencies that promise to do the job in less than four weeks.
Ask the Right Questions When Considering a Website Redesign
Redesigning websites isn’t a walk in the park. It’s a huge commitment that calls for a team effort to get everything right. By asking the right questions from the outset, you can help ensure that that you get a website redesign that works for your overall business strategy.
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