Website Redesign: Best Practices to Avoid Crucial Mistakes
A critical factor in the success of your business is your branding and how you present your business to customers. If your products and services are on par with your competition, then how you present your brand will be the differentiating factor in the minds of potential customers.
This article outlines some of the ways you can realize an effective website redesign while avoiding some of the pitfalls that come with the process.
The Importance of a Redesign
Consumer values and tastes are constantly changing, especially within accelerating digital markets. That's why staying up to date with current trends in the marketplace and society as a whole is crucial. When it comes to the appearance of your website, it's important you recognize when it's time for a redesign.
Yes, this process can be rewarding, but as with most changes, there's a level of risk involved. A primary concern should be analyzing the buyer persona of your consumers and keeping their loyalty in mind while adjusting yourself to new audiences. Successfully doing so will result in consumer retainment and proliferation.
So, You Want a Fresh Look?
The first step to a website redesign is deciding how much you want to change. Maybe you need a whole new site-wide template layout with a new navigation bar and catchy headlines – or perhaps you just want to tweak a few things like your fonts. Whatever you're altering, you'll want to develop a conversion optimization strategy that can guide you through the process and safeguard you from unnecessary risks.
Following a conversion optimization strategy can be a relatively simple process that advises you to pay close attention to your site's analytics as you make progressive changes. This lets you receive and interpret feedback for each change you make so that you can make informed decisions concerning various elements of your website's design. Even if you're going for a full makeover, try doing one thing at a time and testing the waters with your audience as you go.
For each element, you plan on varying, track traffic and engagement patterns before fully implementing a change. Documenting your metrics before the redesign process is also wise as it allows you to compare new metrics from the redesign to your starting point.
Now that you have a strategy in mind to guide you through your redesign, let's examine some common mistakes that you're going to want to avoid.
Sacrificing Responsiveness
As you make changes or additions to your site, make sure you're not sacrificing the user experience for its design. Keep functionality and response times in mind to determine whether a cumbersome change is necessary or not.
Forgetting About Mobile Users
While working through the design process, remember to regularly switch between desktop and mobile views to ensure that you're delivering the best possible experience for either type of device. A slow or confusing mobile page could mean a lost customer, especially if it's their first visit to your site.
What if someone is sent a link to your site by a friend and they decide to check it out on their mobile device? You may have an effectively designed desktop experience, but a poor mobile page may mean this potential customer never checks you out again.
Poor Spacing
Spacing out elements in your design gives them room to breathe and fosters greater readability. Conversely, poorly spaced-out content will lessen the contrast between products, categories, or other materials and make your visitors feel bombarded by visual information.
Lacking Hierarchy
With website design, you want the most important and helpful visual information to be prioritized over the less significant. If your site doesn't know what's important about your business, then neither will your visitors. Prioritize the most likely information to draw traffic and ensure it's clearly positioned on your landing pages.
Too Complicated
Since the inception of the internet, website design has trended towards becoming simpler to create a user experience focused on ease. A website that is readable and easy to use is more likely to captivate traffic and keep them on your page. That said, don't bog down your site with too many headings, buttons, or images. You'll probably notice this if you take the time to research the top brands' websites in your market.
Using Bad Stock Imagery
Not all stock imagery is created equally, but even worse, there's a prevalence of unappealing and unintentionally funny stock photos floating around. Using a garishly lit image that took moments to find will only leave your site looking unprofessional while detracting from your design efforts. If you can afford professional photography for your site, then you should consider making the investment. If not, try using different stock image sites and shopping around before settling on an image.
Using Too Much Text or Bad Fonts
This isn't to say that you should avoid posting useful information on your site, just remember to spread it across different categories and pages. Keep your homepage clean and use concise writing to convey information without crowding your design. When implementing any text, choose various fonts for your headings, subheadings, and bodies. Again, try researching some popular brands in your industry to get an idea of how others in your industry are styling their text. You shouldn't totally conform to their tastes, but it helps to know what potential site visitors are accustomed to seeing.
Be Confident in Your Redesign
By avoiding these mistakes and implementing a conversion optimization strategy, we hope that you can feel more confident in undertaking the redesign of your website. Whether you feel totally assured about your choices or need some extra help with the process, feel free to contact the team at WEB ROI for assistance with website design and development, search engine optimization, advertising, and social media strategies.
