When the time comes to redesign a website – and as marketing consultants will often tell you, that time usually comes around once every one and a half to two years – there are so many tools available at our disposal. So many bells. So many whistles. So many ways to make a good website go bad.
The Right Reasons
So how do good marketing consultants avoid bad website redesigns?
By doing it for the right reasons, for starters.
Just because marketers tend to redesign their websites every couple of years isn’t necessarily a signal that you should be doing the same thing. In website redesign, as in life, the “because everyone else is doing it” excuse isn’t always a good one. Boredom is also another bad excuse. Check out our “Worst Reasons Marketing Consultants Use To Redesign A Website” for more important red flags that your web redesign plans might not be worth pursuing.
Setting Goals and Benchmarks
One of the first and easiest ways to know if your website redesign is working for you is to set up some benchmarks and goals and measure against them. Learn about marketing analytics and ask your marketing consultants about which ones you should be tracking. Should you be tracking visits or unique visits, for example? What about bounce rate and conversions? Once you’ve identified the things you should be tracking, you can easily set up those goals to measure against in Google Analytics.
Save + Supe Up Your SEO
Another big pitfall of website redesigns is losing your SEO in the process. If you have tons of indexed pages and they help you rank high in search engines, you need to be very VERY careful not to accidentally have them de-indexed. Your marketing consultants and website designer should be able to report to you on how they intend to do this.
And, while you’re at it, why not discover other SEO strategies and deploy them as part of your website redesign? For instance, you can learn about different types of redirects or build an even better keyword strategy to up your game.
Optimize Your Site For Mobile
Talk about a great excuse for a redesign. If your website isn’t already optimized for mobile, it should be. This will drive conversions and even help you rank on search results. And, remember, new mobile platforms are being born every day – so make sure your site speaks to all of them flawlessly.
Words Matter
Marketing consultants that know how to write for the web are the ones that can make your site truly memorable. Remember, it isn’t about you. It’s about the problems you solve for your visitors. So, if you’re able to communicate via words and functionality just what it is that you can PROVIDE to visitors, they’ll be that much more likely to buy whatever it is that you’re selling.