Website redesign process

Why do you need a website redesign? 

Have you ever opened up a cookbook from the 70s and thought, “who in their right mind would serve ham and bananas hollandaise to a dinner guest”? The simple answer is that it was the flavour at the time. It worked, and people enjoyed it.

Fortunately, tastes change. This is equally true in the world of business as it is for dinner parties. Trends shift, industries evolve, and technology improves.

Chances are, if you’ve had a website for more than 5 years, it probably isn’t meeting modern needs. There’s no shame in that! 

A new website redesign project gives you a new opportunity to reinvigorate your brand. Better yet, it allows you to increase your leads, supercharge your sales, and power the future growth of your business.

A redesigned website built for purpose is crucial for your success. TrueList tells us why:

• 70% of online businesses fail because of bad user experience
• 90% of users will leave a website because of bad design
• Good user interface design can increase your conversions by 200%

As website redesign specialists, EngineRoom is here to give you insight into how we use data to create new web assets that work. We’ll give you a look under the hood at our website redesign process and prepare you to take the next step towards greater growth.

How to redesign a website that meets your business needs

A website redesign strategy relies on a balance between accurate goal setting, thorough research, and creative problem-solving. Before we go any further, we need to understand what you want to achieve as a business.

Understanding business objectives

There’s no point in designing a website if it doesn’t work for your business. As a business owner, you likely have objectives you want to achieve. The path to reaching those objectives may not be clear just yet. Fortunately, new websites can yield avenues for growth that you’ve not yet considered.

Here are some things to think about when examining your objectives:

‍How do you make money? Is it through sales, leads, conversions, or boots on the ground in-store? What segments of your business drive your revenue?

‍What do you want to achieve? Do you want to grow your business by a certain percentage? Are you looking for new customers in new markets?

‍How fast do you want to grow? Do you want immediate results? Or do you want to build out an asset that continues to convert valuable traffic into lifelong customers?

Answers to these questions will form the framework of your website redesign project and get it off to the best possible start.

Stages of the website redesign process

Now that we know what you want to achieve, we can get down to business. At EngineRoom, we split the website redesign process up into 3 separate stages:

1. Research - This is where we conduct background research about your current website. We’ll take a deep dive into your competitors, your target audience, and how people will likely use your new site.
2. Production - Now we get a chance to bring that research to life visually. We’ll produce content and redesigned pages that speak to your brand and turn website visitors into quality conversions. 
3. Refinement - Now that everything has been brought together, we can refine, go live, and test. We’ll make sure that everything is working correctly and we’ll offer suggestions on how to expand.

Let’s get into these phases and what they mean for your website redesign project.

1. Research

Review the existing website

First, we begin by taking a look at your current website. Then, we’ll investigate what’s working, what’s not, and what’s important for the success of the new site. 

Our analysis will also investigate the technical limitations of your website and determine if there are any issues with:

• Broken links
• Cluttered web pages
• Site speed
• Responsiveness
• Website performance
• Site structure and organisation 

One of the most important data sets we’ll look at is conversion rate. Conversion rate is how many visitors to your site are converting to sales, leads, or phone calls. We'll track this through EngineRoom via data from Google Analytics and use the before and after figures as a benchmark for our success.

Investigate the target audience and competitors

The target audience is directly aligned with your business objectives. It’s who is using your website, how they use it, and what they need as a consumer. In the EngineRoom platform, you can enter information about your brand and target market that will allow us to frame our ongoing marketing strategy.

Have you ever seen a competitor’s website that makes you jealous? This is a good thing! We’ll take a look at your close competitors and see how we can create a better digital asset. We can also track competitor data directly in EngineRoom, giving us clarity over the gaps we can close.

Formulate a website redesign plan

All the above information will form the roadmap that will ultimately lead to a completely redesigned site. We’ll meet with you to discuss this plan and deliver a solution appropriate for your business objectives and budget.

This plan might recommend solutions such as:

• Landing pages for PPC advertising will net customers quickly and can be used in combination with social advertising.
• An entire website with content-rich pages will facilitate search engine optimisation (SEO) and growth in organic traffic.
• A content management system that will allow you to easily make updates to product pages without going through a developer.
• An eCommerce platform with an online store, product pages, shopping carts, and customer service widgets.
  

2. Production

Outline the Website Redesign Deliverables

Moving into production, we start to develop a timeline of what will be produced and when. You’ll get a complete roadmap and timeline of deliverables that come with the project.

These deliverables can include:

• A new sitemap
• Reports on user behaviour
• Competitor analysis 
• Search engine optimisation strategy and keyword targetting
• UI design strategy
• Photo/video shoot briefs
• Tracking and analytics

Wireframe each web page style

Here’s where the real fun begins. We will start by ‘wireframing’ your new web pages. Wireframing is where we develop a skeleton for website pages based on the objectives of the page. It’s the process of pencilling in our ideas before putting them ‘on paper’ when we create high-fidelity designs.

A wireframe might include stylistic components such as:

• Written website content to find more traffic
• Conversion elements like buttons and forms
• Vibrant image galleries
• Engaging video content
• Cohesive internal linking structures
• Flexible menus for easy navigation

There’s no limit to what we can include to improve a website’s user experience. We’ll work with you to get the wireframe of your website absolutely perfect before we proceed to the next stage of production.

Create high-fidelity designs and content

Here’s where we get to flex our creative muscles. We start to flesh out the skeleton created by the wireframes with visual elements and content to create a living, breathing versions of each style of web page before they go live.

We’ll use the branding details you have provided to inform what visual elements we create on pages. Whether it is a single landing page or an entire business website, the visual elements our designers create will provide the best user experience.

At the same time, we’ll write website content that engages, converts, and appeases the algorithmic demands of search engines. As well as long-form content, our search engine optimization efforts can include writing meta descriptions, creating a network of internal links, and other technical tasks.

3. Refinement

Action feedback on design and content

Here’s where you, the business owner, get to offer your feedback. We’ll take this feedback and make changes to what we have produced.

We’ll work closely with you to ensure that the website design elements and content meet your expectations. It might take a few rounds before we find a balance between your requirements, what we have produced, and what will perform as a user-friendly website, but rest assured, we will find our alignment!

Develop the front and backend

Once we have received approval from all stakeholders, we will move into the final development stage. Our team acts as your web designer and developer, turning our stylistic creations into a final, working product ready for launch.

Launch, refine, and evolve

It’s time to launch! A website launch is one of our favourite events. We work in partnership with your marketing team to ensure that everything runs smoothly before, during, and after launch.

Before we go live, we’ll implement all tracking tools. Then, we’ll hook up Google Analytics and plug you into the EngineRoom platform, giving you deep insight into where your leads are coming from and how your pages are performing. 

We can continue our user testing efforts after go-live to ensure that you’re on top of the game. We can also continually add to your website, by building out new product categories, expanding the scope of your services, and growing your business segments.

Stakeholder questions for website redesign

If you’re looking to undertake a new site redesign project, there are a few things you should ask your web development company:

• What key performance indicators can you provide for the success of my website?
• What’s the timeline from brief to go-live?
• Will you conduct user research and market research to determine the best solution?
• Do I need to source any creative assets like photos and video?

Do not let anyone redesign your website that doesn’t have answers to these questions. They are likely looking to do things on the cheap.

The ultimate value of a website redesign project

Website redesigns can offer untold value for your business. Well, that’s not exactly true. The estimated ROI on investment in website redesign and user experience updates can be more than huge!

The true value of a website redesign is an order of magnitude of what you put in. If you are engaged with the process and offer timely, constructive feedback, you’ll get better results. If you trust your website design team, you’ll get a product that performs, converts, and sells.

Learn more about how we brough a business, built a new website and launched a digital marketing strategy to generate a 1266% ROI.

Key take outs

The website redesign process can be complex. If you’re thinking of getting started with a website development company, these are the key things you should keep in mind:

• Defining business objectives is the best way to start a website redesign project
• Data-driven strategy and research will define a more successful end product
• Content needs to be balanced with UX (user experience) considerations
• Websites should be scalable and built to grow with your business
• Feedback is essential to fruitful website redesign engagement
• Tracking benchmark statistics before and after launch to measure impact is critical for stakeholder management and visibility around ROI

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Ready to start a website redesign of your own?

Book a strategy session with one of our senior digital advisors and they’ll take a look at:

• Your current website
• Your competitors website and traffic
• Your business objectives

Following this analysis, they’ll sit down with you to begin strategising your new website.

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