Collin Lawrence
Published 2/02/23
A website redesign can reap massive rewards for you and your business. In this article we cover all the benefits of a fresh start.
A website redesign entails a lot more than just refreshing the look of your existing website. It includes evaluating every aspect of your website from site performance to design relevance and ensures they are aligned with your business goals.
In this article we go through each of the areas considered in a website redesign and the impact that they can have on your business.
Because we live in a digital world, your website is the central hub for your business. It's where people go to learn about your services, products and offerings and it's typically where most people will develop their first impression of your company. This means it's really important to get your web design perfect.
If you have a poorly designed website, people's perception of your business and brand will be unfavorable, even if you are running an amazing operation. Solid web design is one of, if not the, most important factor in improving your digital presence.
In a website redesign, your entire website's design will be updated and brought up to current standards and will be tailored to the unique needs and interests of your target audience. Pages that are outdated or ineffective will be rewritten. The result is improved perception by all your visitors. The impact of this should not be overlooked.
It's no secret that people do business with firms that they trust. As the perception of your site improves, potential customers will have an easier time trusting your firm.
It has been shown that 75% of website credibility comes from design. This means that if your current website has outdated design, it may be causing trust issues for potential customers.
A well-designed website doesn't just focus on being visually appealing, it also is specifically designed for converting visitors by guiding them to relevant information that teaches them about your business and your unique value propositions.
Website conversions and sales happen by drawing users in with appealing design, showing them the benefits that a website's product or service will offer and making it extremely easy for them to sign up, buy, convert or any other relevant action by using clear calls to action.
If your current site does not have a clear flow that guides users from reading your information to filling out your sign up form, then you could be missing out. A professional web designer knows how to lay out information in such a way that gives new visitors an easy path to conversion or action.
You could have the most incredible information on your site, but if it's hard to figure out how to contact you, buy your product, or sign up, then this could potentially hurt your business and sales.
User Experience is an important factor in increasing your leads, sales and conversions. Imagine a site where you want to buy a product. The link to buy the product is clear, additional information about the product is easy to access on the site and the checkout process is beautiful and amazing. This is a good user experience.
Now imagine a site where you can't figure out if a product is what you're actually looking for because the images are blurry, you can't figure out where to click for more information and when you finally go to check out, the site hiccups and you have to enter everything in again from scratch. This is a bad user experience.
A redesigned website ensures that the user experience is flawless and uses modern technology to make your prospects' lives as easy as possible, resulting in more sales and conversions.
Building brand image is vitally important for new companies as well as veteran companies that have been around for years. Your brand image encompasses the impression that users have of your products and services.
A website redesign will incorporate any new branding efforts or initiatives that have gone on offline with your products and services and will incorporate those into your website to ensure brand consistency and cohesion.
Brand consistency can increase revenue by 20% as shown in this report.
Your website has the potential to be the greatest purveyor of your brand identity and a website redesign can go a long way to increasing your brand equity.
Of all the investments you make to increase your brand recognition, perception and cohesion, none will be more important than the investment you make in a new website.
Optimizing your site for search engines is the key to driving new traffic to your site. A website redesign will absolutely keep this top of mind when building your new website.
In their simplest form, search engines aim to deliver users quality, relevant content that they're searching for. While the algorithms are very complex and evolve on a regular basis, there are core components that they all rely on such as quality content, user-friendly sites and websites that load and perform quickly.
A website redesign can impact your search rankings by optimizing your site for search engines in a variety of ways.
A key to ranking high on search engine results pages is to have content on your website that is optimized for search. This means it is written specifically to appeal to search engine algorithms by targeting keywords, but is also written to engage users to convert to your site.
During a website redesign, new technologies and tools are typically used to evaluate which of your pages are properly optimized to rank on search engines. During a redesign it's also suggested to start using blog posts to provide quality content to drive organic traffic to your door.
Quality content isn't the only ranking factor for organic search. Core web vitals are an important factor and revolve around loading performance, responsiveness and visual stability.
If your current website is performing slowly or has other technical issues, this can greatly hurt your search engine rankings. Because the search algorithms change frequently, it is likely that there are significant improvements than can be made in a website redesign that will boost your search engine rank.
Security is an important component of a website redesign. It will typically review several factors regarding the security of your site which will result in greater security for you and your users.
Several years ago, using HTTPS (a secure protocol for transferring data over the internet) was limited to payment processing companies or websites that were dealing with sensitive information. HTTPS is now becoming the norm and even Google favors sites that use HTTPS.
Adding HTTPS and an SSL certificate is almost always included in website redesigns and can not only improve the security of your site but your search rankings as well.
Malicious attack techniques evolve every day and it's important to ensure your site is current on security best practices. A proper website redesign will ensure your site is completely safe, but also set up to prevent future website security issues.
There's no better time than during a website redesign to backup all of your web content and files in a secure storage location separate from your hosting server. Many people with old websites don't have copies of their website and in some cases can't even contact the team that made the originals.
With a new website you (or your designer) will be able to keep everything backed up in the event of a worst-case scenario.
You can have the best website in the world, but if it loads slowly, then a large amount of your traffic may navigate away from it. There are a variety of ways to increase your website's performance and a website redesign will review those relevant to your website and goals. Some of these include:
A content delivery network is a series of servers distributed all across the world that provide content to users closest to them. For example, if someone is accessing your website in Thailand, it will be much faster for them to get your website's data from a CDN server in the Philippines than one in the USA. This is a straightforward way to increase website speed.
Not all hosting companies are created equal. There are three primary types of hosting - shared, Virtual Private Server and Dedicated Server and the leader of your website redesign can help you identify which option is right for you.
Images are a core part of any website, but just because they seem to be displaying properly on your site doesn't mean that they are optimized. For example, let's say your image is displaying in your browser at a size of 500 pixels by 500 pixels (not terribly massive), but the actual file size itself is over 1900 pixels in each dimension.
This means you have a huge image that may be slowing down loading time, when in reality it could be a fraction of the size if you shrunk the actual image down to the size it will be displayed at in the browser.
This is one of many factors that will be taken into consideration during a website redesign.
You may have a much stronger product offering than competitors, but if your business website is not properly designed, it can make your product look inferior.
If someone is evaluating your business against competitors online and your website is outdated or has unattractive design or even if your content is not properly calibrated to target your audience then you'll lose out - even if you have a better real-world product.
A key component of redesign strategy is to evaluate your competitors' sites and ensure that yours stands out against them and highlights key areas where your product or service outshines the competition.
Yielding more leads, a boost to your site's SEO, even higher Google rankings and a better website experience, a website redesign can have a profound impact on your business and typically can pay for itself in a very short amount of time.
A complete overhaul of your old website by an experienced web developer and design team while revamping your digital marketing strategy can be a complete game changer and accelerate the achievement of your business goals.
If you're interested in learning more about website redesign or are considering one, don't go it alone. We're here to help. We specialize in website redesign and can guide you through every step of the process.
Contact us today for a free strategy call and we'll show you the specific benefits a website redesign can have on your business.