When to Consider Redesigning a Website

Technology evolves rapidly. To connect and be a part of the race it’s essential to upgrade your website as per the current trend, so that no opportunity is missed. Recently I have seen many clients approaching for a website redesign . The change is for a good cause, people prefer to be more sophisticated & flexible in adopting fresher concepts; clients prefer customer-centric website design.

The thought process of clients has changed, they are now setting foot steps towards website redesign process, the concept being more clearer in the sense that website redesign is not just enhancing the aesthetic value of a website, but far beyond that.

However redesigning a website also lays a perfect foundation for greater ROI. Yay a voila & cheerful moment for the marketers. When going for a website redesign, listed below are a few important points which should in kept in mind as a part of your redesign process.

1) Does your website take ages to load…?

Be it any website if the website is too slow, it leaves an annoying user experience, as users do not have time and patience to wait for more than 2 seconds to quit. As you have decided to go for website redesigning, the website’s loading speed of pages plays a very crucial and deciding factor for the user to remain on the page. It’s a wise choice to fix the issues which hinder the website’s speed in the first place. To determine the performance and speed of your website’s loading time, use Page Speed Tools from Google to know what exactly could be done to reduce the loading time of pages.

There are many factors which impact the site speed & loading time.

Invest in the right hosting plan to improve the response time, to gain more traffic to your site make a wise choice by opting for a bit higher hosting plan rather than a mediocre one which impacts the response time.

Page redirecting is an important criterion, when you’re redesigning your website and you have endless no: of redirects again and again which goes elsewhere, page speed is affected.

Images enhance the aesthetic value of a site, but restrict yourself to smaller image size and use tools such as SmushIt which considerably squeeze the image size thereby not impacting the page load time.

While these are only some factors, there are other things to optimize the loading time of a website.

2) Your website looks primitive and so is your CMS

Technology almost competes with the speed of light. New technologies keep sprouting like mushrooms. While some websites and Content management system cannot match with the speed of technology. People prefer being fast and effective hence invest more money to be razor sharp especially in business. If your website has used outdated technologies you’re limiting your scope of growth and inviting more security concerns. Designing contemporary website with more advanced features and technologies keeps you updated, flexible and minimizes security threat.

3) Is your site navigation a mess?

Users prefer websites which clear navigation and easy information, as you never know who is visiting your site. Maintaining clarity and transparency in a site navigation is key for websites. It’s often very confusing when your site has many levels of navigation and too many elements crammed up which arises utter chaos in a user’s mind. Keep your site well structured to minimize confusion from the user’s perspective.

Stick to more specific navigation tags rather than being generic and your description should be in line with what you’re saying. Use tools such as Crazy Egg to understand navigation better. Place important buttons only at the top of the page. Redesign and re arrange clear navigation for enhanced user experience. Avoid usage of images as it increases the loading time, and text information loads faster and is SEO friendly.

4) Have you considered what to do if SEO backfires?

Many websites consider to go for a redesigning a website with SEO perspective in mind. However sometimes, things can go terribly wrong and it might end up the redesign worsens SEO. So let’s take smart steps incase such a situation arises. When re-designing a site or improving your current CMS, analyze all the possible SEO issues before hand. Make a note of all your targeted keywords from tools such as Webmasters to know the source of traffic to your site.

It’s a good practice to set up redirects, and flush your old URL’s as your site is under renovation and set up redirects, else there are greater chances that your interrupting the user’s and SEO experience. If you’re building your website using Word Press using CMS plug-ins which saves time than doing it manually. Intimate Google of the updates and changes in the domain names and address, by using Google Webmasters.

5) Your results don’t speak out Loud

If you have done all that you could for your website and still don’t get the results you assume you have failed. Your happy to invest provided the change is visible. Obviously.. Your results measure your success of how you engage, attract and convert your visitors to your clients and how you optimize your website move closer towards your business goals.

Make up your mind before leaping a step forward, what exactly you want your website to achieve? Think what if your adopting to the new technology can do for your site to invite more business oppurtunities. On drawing a clear conclusion you’re a few steps away from getting a new redesign website which is fully functional, modern and effective.

6) Change is essential be it business or life

Your business focus or goals change with time, it’s perfect. It’s absolutely necessary that your new websites supports these changes. Adopting new technology gives greater flexibility to your business and invites better opportunities. Recent trends such as Social media, reviews, lead generations and responsiveness never existed few years ago.