Over the past month, I’ve talking about different reasons why it might be time to redesign a site. I covered the process of the overhaul of our own site and the three main options for mobile friendly web sites.
If you’re at the point where you’ve decided, “Yes, I need to redesign our site,” before you go any further and starting thinking about what you want, stop for a moment and look at what you have.
Ideally, the next rendition of your business web site should go a step further than where you are now. That’s the goal. But don’t throw out what is already working well in the process.
Before you talk to a web developer about new colors and technologies, look at the data of your existing site and answer the five following questions:
Hopefully, you have a statistics program such as Google Analytics installed on your site collecting data. If so, the answers to these questions are as simple as pulling up a few charts. If not, every hosting service should have one, if not several, statistics programs available in the hosting control panel. The statistics will not be as accurate as a program like Google Analytics, but it will give you an overview of the traffic coming to your site.
Five Questions to Ask Before a Site Redesign
#1 How are people currently coming to your site?
How are people coming to your web site. Are they coming directly to the url by offline promotion? Are they finding your site through search? If so, which keywords are they using to search and which page are they arriving at? Are they coming through email links? Social media sites?
What pools of traffic is your site already capturing well? This is important to know because you don’t want to lose ground you’ve already gained by drastically changing something that is working well.
#2 How are people currently using your site?
Are people primarily using it for information and then completing the order offline? Are they checking for weekly specials? Having you engaged your users in a community?
How long does the average user stay on your site? How many pages do they view? What is the path they take through your site? If you have goals site up in your tracking program, what is working well?
#3 What does your current web site do really well?
What does your current web site do really well? What do you really love about your existing site that you can’t do without in the next one?
#4 What does your current web site not do?
What does your current web site not do? Is there something that really frustrates you when using it? Is there something that is continually causes hangups, either for your customers or your staff, that you do not want to repeat?
#5 What are the priorities for your new web site?
Make a list of features you would like to have in your next site and prioritize them in order of importance. Along with this, determine your budget. Keep in mind that a web site that is developed with a view towards future expansion can be built on over time. If your wish list is bigger than your current budget, realistically consider what the “must have” items are and plan for addition of the other items in stages.
Do you need a new look for your web site? Contact Us.
Great post and great questions in design.