It takes a lot of time, research, and creativity to put together an online presence that works for your company goals. With this in mind, we’re sharing some tips on how you can successfully complete your next website redesign project.
1. Define website goals
Without clearly defined website goals, you could find yourself with a website redesign that does not help your business in the way you intended. While this may be because website changes are just one element of overall marketing strategy, defining website goals can help guide overall digital strategy and increase the likelihood that website changes will have an impact on conversion rates or other key performance indicators.
While some website goals are more global—like encouraging user engagement or building brand awareness—others should be more focused on increasing revenue through lead generation. To get started defining website goals for your next website redesign project, consider these four steps:
- Define business objectives
- Prioritize business objectives to determine what’s most important
- Map website and marketing activities to meet business objectives
- Establish website goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) for website redesign project
2. Know your website audience
A well defined website goal is good, but we’ve seen companies fail to take one important next step: identifying their website audience. If you’re not sure who your website visitors are, the website changes you make may end up falling flat because they’re aimed at the wrong people.
To get started identifying website audiences for your website redesign project, follow these three steps:
- Create personas
- Define user behavior patterns
- Assess current content strategy by persona to identify gaps or opportunities
Once you have a good idea of your goals and website audience, you’ll be in a better position to know:
- What website features and content people want
- How website changes will impact user behavior
3. Set website project goals
We often find that website redesign projects can get lost amidst the excitement for new website elements or fresh design. But without setting website goals, teams risk losing sight of why they’re actually making website changes in the first place.
Set website project goals by following these three steps:
- Start with business objectives
- Determine what tools you need to support your website redesign effort (ex: SEO tool, analytics tool) and decide how to collect data (surveys for A/B testing)
- Define website metrics and KPIs
With website goals, an audience identified, website personas mapped out, website stakeholders can prioritize website changes to increase conversion rates or visitor engagement that aligns with your website goals.
4. Focus website redesign efforts on high-value content
The key to a successful website is strong keyword optimization for relevant search terms . And research shows that half of the top ten organic search results get more than 50% of their traffic from long-tail keywords—keywords that are three words or longer and contain question marks or terms with modifiers like “best.”
By determining which pages on your website should be optimized based on highest search volume (and including them in your site maps), you will not only gain website traffic, but website conversion rates will benefit from website visitors getting exactly what they want.
5. Highlight website content that performs well
Just as research shows website changes can increase website engagement and conversion rates, website updates can also help improve search rankings, which in turn helps drive more traffic to your website.
One way to do this is by looking at the top-performing content on your website (such as blog posts or product pages) with search analytics tools like Google Analytics . By identifying strong performing content pieces, website teams can update current content to create a positive user experience while increasing their chances of increasing search rankings.
6. Get started with SMART goals
Finally, when crafting website objectives and setting project scopes for your website redesign effort, use website SMART goals to establish website project scope and website tasks important to website success.
SMART website goals are website objectives that are:
- Specific (clearly defined)
- Measurable (easy to determine when the goal is met)
- Actionable (specific actions for meeting the website goal)
- Realistic (achievable within time frame) and
- Time bound (limited in timeframe)
The process of re-designing a website can seem daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. With the right tools and information, you can successfully complete your next project without stress or worry. If you need help with anything from understanding how to set up new content on your site to updating old pages so they work well across different browsers and devices, give us a call today! We’re here to make things as simple as possible for our clients.
Give us a call today (360) 450-3711.
