5 Tips for Developing a Website Redesign

With the average lifespan of a website being somewhere between 3 and 5 years, chances are that you’ll have a website redesign project soon. Answer these questions and it will help bring the design together. Plus, we have a few more tips for developing a website redesign strategy.

1. Start with an Audit

As a website starts to age, it can be somewhat easier to take a critical eye to it. This is a healthy first step when it comes to planning a redesign.

Audit the site from everything to content and information to goals to the way it looks. Understanding what works — and what might not work — can help determine what you want from a redesign.

Here are a few questions you should be able to answer about your current website to help develop a strategy for your new one:

• Are there new types of content or pages that you want in the redesign?
• What is the most popular content?
• Are there features you wish you had on your website but don’t?
• How many people visit your website each week/month/year?
• How big is your website (number of pages and blog posts)?

2. Develop Measurable Goals

Website redesign goals connect to overall business goals. Some are easier to quantify, such as sales. You want to know if the work you put in is working as intended.

Websites come with all kinds of different goals. To make the most of a redesign set measurable goals for success. Others can be a lot more difficult, such as figuring out how many people actually read an article. Measurable goals from your website might include:

• Number of phone calls from the website
• Number or type of visitors each month
• Users spending more time on the website
• Website orders, downloads, or sales
• Generating leads for an off-line sales team
• Action conversions, such as filling out a form, visiting a specific page, or completing a game or task

3. Review and Adapt Content

Most users find it easier and faster to make changes in the old system, rather than making adjustments and trying to learn the new design at the same time.

Making changes to content ahead of time can be a huge help, particularly for a large website that will get moved over to a new design. Evaluate each page of the current website and edit and/or remove pages to fit the redesign. You can start adding new content as well.

4. “Order” New Content

The design will be hard to see and even harder to put together if core components of the design aren’t available. The most challenging part of a website redesign strategy is visualizing new content. Make a list of all the new content necessary for the redesign and start “ordering” that new content from your team or vendors.

When making these assignments, be clear about what you want and need and how the phones, video, and other content will be used.

5. Consider new features

New technology might make it possible if that wasn’t the case the last time around. Technology moves fast. There might be dozens of new tools and features available to you now that were not a part of your last website design.

Also, go back to your audit and look for things you wish you could do with the website. Just think of how dominant video has gotten thanks to greater availability of high-speed internet.