A website redesign is one of the most misunderstood and misused strategies when it comes to building your brand, increasing conversion rates, and generating more traffic.
Many businesses fail to understand the pitfalls that can arise while overlooking the essentials required to execute a successful web redesign that meets their goals and objectives.
Redesign Pitfalls
There are several pitfalls you should watch out for when strategizing and implementing your site’s redesign.
But the biggest mistake occurs when webmasters and business owners fail to prioritize search engine optimization (SEO) as a fundamental component of their redesign plan.
A major overhaul to your site could undo all of the previous SEO gains you’ve made. Not only will this result in lost time and money, but you’ll also have to invest these valuable resources when starting over to regain your hard-earned search rankings.
What Does Your Redesign Really Need?
In order to have a successful redesign that meets your business needs, you need to consider the technology required.
A site that’s SEO-friendly should leverage certain technologies while avoiding others. You must coordinate with your design team to create a redesign that meets all of your needs and prevents unwanted issues.
Before you develop and implement your redesign, you and your team should review wireframes first in order to maximize your results and minimize any unnecessary loss of time or money.
Your redesign must allow search engines to crawl and index your site’s content. If not, any optimization, keyword research, and UI design will all go to waste.
Homepage Essentials
Your site’s homepage is the most critical point of contact for new traffic. Designing an effective homepage isn’t always easy and requires that you make the right decisions during a website redesign.
The following are just some of the critical functions of your homepage:
Gateway into your business
- Typically receives the greatest amount of traffic
- Articulates your value proposition
- Guides the user to the appropriate content, offer, etc.
- The first impression that defines your brand
The homepage must meet a variety of tasks quickly and effectively. The wrong design feels cluttered and overwhelms your audience. Your value proposition and call-to-action can become buried underneath unnecessary design elements.
Using media such as video, which may be impressive to business owners, can lead to frustration in users who need to access the right information as fast as possible without having to sit through irrelevant or slow content.
Webpage Hierarchy
Search engines and users alike must be able to understand the relationships between the pages and content of your site. These should be prioritized appropriately to achieve the best results in your SEO efforts.
The use of categories is an easy way to distinguish between the content within your site. Subcategories allow you to further define your pages so that search engines and users can navigate the information related to your products and services.
You can link your pages together in a way that lets search engines know which ones have a higher priority. These pages should have good navigation and a higher number of links.
Your site’s design can also create hierarchy through the use of layout, spacing, size, and color. These elements work together to guide users through your content and direct them towards your offer.
Other factors such as usability, keyword research, and A/B split testing should also be considered in your site’s redesign.
These ensure that your site continues to improve on its key performance indicators (KPI). But they can only do so when the proper planning has been put in place.
Knowing where to begin your website redesign can be tricky. Let us know what obstacles are keeping you from taking your website performance to the next level in the comments below.
