Why do I need a website redesign?

by David on Friday 29th January, 2010 at 12:01 COMMENTS (0)

If you already have a website and you are thinking your site looks a little tired and needs a bit of sprucing up then this is not the right question.

You should be asking is my site working for my business?

Look at your site with new eyes or ask friends, current customers or clients to take a look and ask them what they think.

Ask what works and what doesn't work, what needs to change? How can you get a better ROI or Return On Investment.

Do visitors know what to do when they get to your site? Do they know how to contact you or how to purchase something easily?

Have your visitors been given all the information they need to navigate and find what they want?

Also do they trust your site do they feel secure and safe while viewing your website, do you have the relevant security in place to stop their details from being harvested by hackers or spammers?

Maybe before a redesign you should have a bit of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)done to see who is visiting and how long they are staying, are they looking around or just finding your site and bouncing straight out without seeing anything of interest.

You could include a feedback form to ask visitors what they like or don't like about your site, these forms could be made available on the side or pop-up when visitors leave your site.

Run some speed checks to see how fast your site loads, how messy is your code? does your page construction take too long? Is this stopping visitors from viewing your site quickly.

Once you have gathered this information then you will have all the answers to allow you to decide what is required.

Full all encompassing redesign, whole new start with new graphics, colour scheme, pictures and everything, hell why not go for a full rebranding.

Possibly all you will need is a simple basic layout change and tidy up, bringing the design up to date and making it faster to load and easier to update.

Redesigning a site can have a negative impact on your search engine position, but this is likely to recover quickly if the redesign incorporates SEO techniques and contains linksto the new site pages from any old obsolete links.

Whatever you need make sure you have the facts before you go full steam ahead with a redesign.

David Radisic
Essex based website designer