Thinking of a Redesign…Consider This First

Redesigning a website is a pretty demanding task, so it is important to plan accordingly and consider all of the factors that you will encounter during the redesign. Below are some factors you could be faced with.

1. What is the goal of the redesign?

What do you hope to accomplish? It’s always important to have a clear understanding of your reasons and motivations as they should impact the decisions that you make along the way. Without knowing these goals the project will lack direction and you will likely wind up with a website that still doesn’t meet your needs.

2. Is this going to be just a minor upgrade or a complete overhaul?

A redesign could be anything from a minor facelift to an entirely new site. Obviously the time, effort, and cost involved will vary, but first you should determine what types of changes are required for you to meet your goals with the design. If a complete redesign is done you will also want to consider to what extent the new design should resemble the old design. If visitors are coming back to the site, chances are you will want them to notice the new design without feeling like they’ve never been to your site before.

3. What aspects of the current design are most effective?

Most likely there are some things about the current design that work very well, and these may be aspects that you would like to keep or incorporate into the new design. It’s a good idea to make a simple list of your likes and dislikes to help with decisions on the new design.

4. What aspects of the current design are not effective?

Building on point #3, if you are redesigning the site you are bound to want to get rid of some specific aspects of the website or the design. Are there some characteristics of the design that do not accurately portray your business to new visitors?

5. Who is your target audience?

During any design process you never want to lose focus on the visitors. By knowing who you are targeting and how you can meet their needs, you will be on your way to building an effective website. What style of design are your users going to like?

6. How can the website be more user-friendly?

Improving the functionality and usability of a website is always a good thing. It’s pointless to spend time and money on a redesign that looks great but simply isn’t user-friendly.

7. Does the logo/branding need to be changed or updated?

Most likely the website will include some form of a logo or branding. Are these items still up-to-date and will they function effectively with a new design? If your logo is out-of-date and not attractive, a new design may not do much good if it is still using the same old logo.

8. Should the color scheme change or remain the same?

In point #2 I mentioned that most of the time you will want to keep the website at least looking familiar to repeat visitors. Using a similar color scheme is one of the best ways to accomplish this. A lot of times it can be a good idea to make some minor changes to the color scheme, such as changing shades of colors or adding a few new colors, just to give the site a fresh look.

9. What should be the focal points of the design?

Every design is going to draw attention to certain parts of the page in one way or another. By knowing what you want to emphasize you will have more control over what gets attention from visitors.

10. How can the navigation be made more effective?

Navigation is one of the most critical elements of a site’s usability. If a significant amount of content and/or pages have been added to the site since the last design, it is possible that navigation is no longer optimal. Before designing think about how visitors will want to move through the site, and make it as easy as possible for them.

11. What will visitors want from the website?

Meeting the needs of visitors is important to the success of any website. Will visitors be coming to the site looking for information? If so, make it easy to find the information and make it a prominent part of the design. Will they be coming to the site to find products? Will they be coming for some other reason? Anticipate what your visitors will want and do your best to give it to them.

12. Who will be doing the maintenance/updates?

Will you be the one doing routine maintenance and updates? Will someone else be doing them? If multiple people will be using the website commenting the code becomes even more important. Code should always be kept as clean as possible, but when others will be doing work on the site has a bigger impact.

13. How can SEO be improved?

Any time a website is being designed, search engines should be considered. The current design may or may not be search engine-friendly, but the new one certainly should be. Should the current page titles be kept, or could they be done more effectively? How can internal linking be improved? Where can headers be used? This list could obviously go on for a while.

14. What pages and search terms are currently driving traffic?

If there are pages on the site that are currently doing very well with search engines, you’ll probably not want to make major changes to the content of those pages. This can easily be overlooked during a redesign, but making excessive changes to pages that are ranking well can kill the rankings. Likewise, what search terms are currently producing traffic? Be sure that they are used in the new design.

15. What will make visitors want to come back?

Most likely you’ve considered how the new design can make a solid first impression, but what is it about the website that will keep visitors coming back for more?

I hope this helps when thinking about your next redesign. If you have questions or are interested in having us look at your current site to provide feedback shoot us an email.