It’s not enough to just have a website. Everybody has one, and for a number of reasons you may find that you need to redesign yours. But where do you start? There are a million things to look at so having the right plan and purpose for your redesign is crucial.
Join us as we discuss:
- The best practices for redesigning a website
- How to focus your efforts on the method of redesign
- Making sure the redesign results in conversions!
The best practices for redesigning a website
In marketing, websites are still very relevant — still holding enough weight to be the reason someone decides not to work with you if your website isn’t up to par in any way:
- Doesn’t work on customer’s phone
- Unable to navigate drop-down menu
- Phone number or reservation creation is hard to find
However, if you can create a clean website, Joe explains that it, “can be a great gateway to your business and what people can expect to experience.”
Since most businesses will already have a website, the focus is on redesign. But there’s a right and wrong way to do it. Andrew walks through the steps:
Step 1
Look at how your website is currently performing and the structure you already have in place — identifying any issues and places of improvement that you’d like to make.
“You might have a form or a landing page that's performing very well, that's getting you a lot of leads. The last thing you want to do is take that away completely, and ruin that intake.” — Andrew Adams
Step 2
Look at other websites in your industry or ones that you respect as a way to inspire your own design.
Step 3
Figure out how your website fits into the customer journey. A restaurant’s website, for example, is primarily for making reservations and housing the menu. Once you identify those main reasons that customers visit your site, build the website around them.
“Everything goes a lot smoother if you figure out what you want in the beginning and have a plan in place.” — Andrew Adams
Step 4
Plan out who is going to build, or rebuild, the website and how much effort will go into it. Once the website is built, you can’t just launch it and leave it — you then have to figure out who will maintain the website down the road.
Step 5
Avoid a slippery slope: Changing just one aspect of your website can have an impact on other parts of your business — leading to unexpected costs. Try to anticipate these unexpected costs before making any change decision.
How to focus your efforts on the method of redesign
When building a company website, instead of putting equal effort into every part, try focusing on pages that get the most traffic.
One of the highest trafficked areas for every website is the homepage. In fact, using heat maps at Scorpion, Andrew and Joe know that only 50% of traffic makes it below the first homepage image.
“We know half the traffic that gets to our homepage is going to drop before they even get to any other content.” — Andrew Adams
Because of this, it’s incredibly important to have a few keys elements in place:
- Company mission: Explain exactly what you can do for your customers.
- Call-to-action: Tell your customers what next steps they should take. This usually includes a button that will take customers where they need to go next.
- Navigation area: Include testimonials, other call-to-actions, and an About Us section here.
- Blog access: As a local business, you won’t have a lot of pages to build SEO from. This is accomplished with a blog instead.
Once everything is in place, Joe encourages everyone to try out the website on multiple devices to make sure that everything is working and the design stays the same regardless of the device.
And remember: Clean over creative. The most beautiful webpage won’t mean much if your customers can’t navigate it.
“Sometimes people want to get creative or do things differently, and then it gets confusing.” — Andrew Adams
Making sure the redesign results in conversions!
You’ve put in all this redesign effort, but how do you know your effort was worth it? Andrew suggests focusing on metrics that are most important to you. For most, it will be website visits, which pages were visited, and number of leads.
Google Analytics is a great free tool to help you get started. On the other hand, if you’d rather have outside help for this work, it can really be worth considering adding a partner to manage your website content and advertising.
More information about today’s topics:
- Joe’s LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joemartinmba/
- Andrew’s Linkedin Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewsadams/
- Joe’s Twitter - twitter.com/joedmarti
- Andrews Twitter - twitter.com/astroma
- Company Website: www.scorpion.co
