Redesigning your website ??
Redesigning a website can be a very exciting process because it’s a blank canvas and you can paint it the way you want. Your creativity and flair is what will bring the best out of you.
It’s imperative to have a great looking website. It has to look awesome if you want to have good traffic on the website and eventually increase the conversion rate.
Unfortunately, majority of the designers and creative teams focus entirely on the visual design of the website, and do not pay heed to or overlook the SEO, content, and functionality aspect of the website. This is where they go wrong. It’s not just the website design that attracts visitors but there are other factors that play a vital role in the success or failure of a website.
So what are the key considerations when redesigning a website?
- Website Structure
When redesigning your website, you shouldn’t overlook the way your site is presently structured. Make sure your information architecture is set up for optimal visibility and conversions. Analyze the effectiveness of your current site.
Which pages convert the best?
What’s the most common route through your website?
Which pages have a high bounce rate?
You should use all of this useful information to improve the architecture of your new website.
In this digital age, websites are likely to be opened on multiple devices including mobile phones and tablets; therefore you must design it the way that it looks great on every device. A website optimized for mobile traffic is a must these days. Your site must be fully responsive. It’s not an option anymore!
- Navigation
Another key aspect is how easily your site can be navigated, by both human visitors and search engine crawlers as this will play a significant role in the success of your new website.
Always use a standard navigation style as it affects traffic and search engine rankings. Make sure everything on your new website is connected to the navigation, from content to the URLs. Your objective should be to help visitors find content on your website, and not to show them a new way to get around the website. Make sure that there are not too many items in your navigation and avoid using too many drop down menus. The standard navigation structure is fairly simple; Follow that and make it easy for the visitors.
- Content
The content on your website is of high importance. The quality and relevance of your content will play the most influential factor in determining the success or failure of your new site. Therefore, it must be taken care of at the time of designing the website.
It is imperative to decide where the content will be visible during the design phase. Also, decide if there is going to be a blog on the website, where users will be able to read informative articles. Try to update the content of the website on a more regular basis because this will allow search engines to crawl your site more frequently, and thus you will have a higher chance of getting better ranking. Make sure that your content is legible, that is you use a nice and clean font and put your content on the right areas on your website. Keywords are high on the algorithm chart for search engine indexing and ranking. Include the right keywords, so that the indexing becomes easier.
A redesign gives you a great opportunity to restructure and reshuffle the content and also cut away any dead wood. If you are unable to finalize the content during the redesign phase, make sure you leave proper place holders for it.
