Many companies choose to redesign their websites, often driven by the desire for a fresh, updated look. However, a new visual appearance is only the beginning.
A website redesign allows businesses to evaluate their current site, analyze business strategies and goals, and consider industry trends.
Here are a few steps you should take while identifying goals for your website’s redesign:
Identify Your Strengths and Weaknesses
Critically analyzing your current site is crucial to improving it. One of the most common ways to handle this is with a content clean-up.
Use tools like Google Analytics or SEMRush to discover what speaks to your target audience and where there’s room for improvement. Measuring your site’s strengths and weaknesses using analytics tools can show how people find your website, what they click on, and bounce rates.
Is there content on your site that’s no longer relevant? Even worse, is there important site content that barely gets any traffic? Questions like these are essential to identifying the strengths and weaknesses of any website.
Know Your Target Audience
Does your website cater to your target audience? Has your target audience changed since your last redesign? We must know the answers to these questions to build or maintain a successful website.
Knowing your audience can help optimize keyword usage, visual aesthetics, and typography. For example, an older target audience generally requires increased focus on ADA compliance.
One of the most important aspects of any website redesign is tailoring user experience (UX) to the target audience.
Conduct Competitive Analysis
Your competitors’ site layout, appearance, and functionality can give you valuable ideas for your redesign. Although copying your competitors is never advisable, tracking industry trends helps you benchmark your site against competitors and envision its future potential.
Some essential questions to ask:
- What makes this company unique? How does their website showcase this?
- What is the overall aesthetic and design style?
- How is content organized and presented? (Layout, readability, and accessibility)
- What are the main CTAs?
- What integrations do they use? (CRM, social media, etc.)
Set Measurable Goals
SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound) will help you design and optimize the most successful website after the redesign is complete.
You might focus on increasing newsletter signups, decreasing bounce rates, and increasing e-commerce performance during your redesign. Knowing what you want from your redesign will give you a beautifully designed website that will help you meet your goals.
Craft Effective Calls-to-Action
When customers visit your website, what actions do you want them to take? Whether you hope leads will sign up for a newsletter, make a purchase, fill out a form, or call your office, your website should be built around your business goals and top-priority CTAs.
You can experiment with different CTA wording and placement to see what resonates best with your audience.
Reassess Your Platform
Your website should support and enhance your business strategy, not dictate it. If your current CMS (content management system) or e-commerce platform is not helping your business run more efficiently, you’re losing valuable time and money. Also, your platform should easily integrate with your ERP (enterprise resource planning), CRM (customer relationship management), and PIM (product information management) if you use them. If it doesn’t, this can be a significant missed opportunity. Integrating your website with other internal and external systems saves you from performing redundant and time-wasting tasks.
Is your site in need of an update? Contact Starkmedia today and ensure your business goals and website design are in sync.
