5 Steps To Take When Preparing For A Website Redesign

• By Sarah
• General News
• 238 Views
• 12th July 2023

Redesigning your website is a major step and there’s a lot to think about. The world of digital design moves at a very fast pace, and an outdated website can seriously impact on your search engine rankings and ability to attract and retain customers. A contemporary and user friendly website makes a great first impression and helps to drive traffic and conversions.

However, if your website already has a strong SEO performance, you will need to take care not to damage your rankings and alienate customers. Bringing a website up through rankings can take a lot of effort and time, and it’s important to mitigate against any adverse impact that a redesign may have. Here are a few points to consider. 

 

 

Make an assessment of your current brand identity

Even the most basic business website will have some form of brand identity, such as a name, a logo and a colour scheme. If you want to start over from scratch with a new business name and logo, consider how this will reflect your brand personality and the type of customers you want to attract. 

When making a name change, it is important to Google any potential new names first to check if there are already existing businesses with the same or similar names. This could cause confusion and you will lose potential customers to the rival companies.

Even if you had the perfect name but it is taken by a similar business, do not be tempted to plough on regardless because you will scupper your SEO prospects and there could be legal consequences.

Test the new name out with opinion polls. Just because you like the sound of a name, it does mean that it will appeal to your target audience. Is it memorable and easy to pronounce and spell? Does it have an unfortunate meaning in a foreign language or could it be abbreviated to an undesirable acronym? All these factors will affect the effectiveness of the rebrand. 

 

Evaluate the website content

Assuming that you already have a fully functioning website in place, the next step is to carry out an audit to review what content you would like to keep and what is longer relevant. It’s also a chance to add fresh content and introduce some new formats, such as videos or micro interactions. 

Remove anything that is no longer up to date and accurate, or does not serve the overall aims of what your customers are trying to achieve. For example, ecommerce customers will not have the time and patience to sit and read half a page of marketing spiel. 

Make sure that your product descriptions are concise and briefly outline the benefits and key features of the product, with a clear call to action at the end. 

 

Put a marketing strategy in place

If your old site didn’t have a particular marketing strategy, now is the time to put one in place. Think about what type of content will attract your target customers. 

For example, if you sell kitchen gadgets, a series of short live action explainer videos demonstrating how to use them will help to boost your SEO rankings. You could also include recipes and general relevant information around cooking and catering skills. 

On the other hand, if you sell a service or tech product that is complex or abstract in nature, you could include infographics or animations to help bring the subject to life. 

 

Put an SEO migration plan in place

If you have a website that has been in place for several years and ranks reasonably well in search engines, you will want to preserve the SEO rankings as far as possible. Identify your strongest keywords and retain these throughout your new content. If you are changing the web address, you should set up redirects to send traffic to the new URL.

SEO migration can be a lengthy process and quite complex if you have a large website with multiple pages, so it may be worth hiring a professional web development company to carry this out. 

 

Work out how much you want to spend

A complete website redesign can soon become costly, so it’s best to work out a ballpark budget before you start. The final figure may depend on whether you have an in-house team that can take on most of the work, or if you will need to outsource the project.

 

Looking to work with a WordPress developer in Lancashire? Please get in touch with us today!