How to Redesign a Website: The Ultimate Guide by Gapsy

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Web technologies are changing every day. The website’s relevant and user-friendly design five years ago is already considered outdated and uncomfortable for customers. When it becomes necessary to redesign a website, an entrepreneur faces some questions:

• How not to lose regular customers?
• How to make the site as user-friendly as possible?
• What needs to be done for a comfortable transition to a new design?

A website redesign is a voluminous and responsible task, and before performing it, you need to perform a number of essential steps, which we will discuss in this article.

Each owner has their reasons for redesigning a website. A redesign is usually done when it becomes clear that a site is out of date and needs updating. Over time, you notice that something is wrong: pictures are crawling out of the forms, buttons are jumping, the text is poorly read. But it’s so crucial that the design is holistic, the structure is convenient, and the resource itself emphasizes the merits of the company and expresses its corporate identity. You look at competitors’ sites and understand that they are doing much better and, more likely, users are more willing to become their customers than yours. It doesn’t matter. Our Gapsy Studio can help you fix the situation! Our agency will update your site and make it modern and beautiful by which everyone wants to become your client.

Still not sure if your website needs a redesign? Then we offer you an article on What Are the Reasons to Redesign Your Website? This article will help you understand exactly when the site needs a redesign.

Interesting fact: according to statistics, 94% of the first user experience depends on your website design. That’s why it’s important to make the design intuitive and easily accessible to even the most inexperienced user. When your site doesn’t meet the target audience’s requirements, you need to make a redesign. So, we offer you these steps to redesign your website:

1. Analyze the current version of the site

The first step is understanding what customers like about the site, which pages they visit most often, and which elements increase conversion. After examining this data, you will understand which elements need to be left and which ones to replace. Information that can be viewed in this case:

• Metrics. Calculate from which pages the most targeted leads came and which pages were not visited at all;
• Video recording of user actions. Get acquainted with the user’s behavior on the page (for example, using Google Analytics), what elements the most attention is directed to, and what elements it does not notice. Analyze the time the user spends on the page. Does he read text content? What images are they viewing?
• User path. Track which pages the user most often comes to for the first time and from which sources this happens (search engines, advertising, or links directly). Which pages do they go to next (for example, often after viewing a page for a particular service, they go to the “Prices” section).

2. Define your goals and priorities

The next important step is to understand what the company wants to achieve with the website redesign. Since we are talking about business sites, you need to use the metrics that affect them: traffic, conversion, user retention, etc. To understand what indicators for the new version of the site will be realistic, you first need to analyze the figures for the current version.

If you know what kind of traffic you have now and how it converts, you can set goals for increasing traffic and sales through the site. Conventionally, if your old site is in the first position in the search results for targeted queries, it’s logical to demand the same from the new version.

3. Conduct a market and competitor’s research

It’s unlikely that your site is the only one in its field – which means that it will compete with other sites both now and in the new design.

Therefore, analyzing competitors’ sites is a good move that will help you make the most effective website redesign. Go to competitors’ sites and assess their strengths and weaknesses. Some unique ideas can be adapted for your project. Analyze how sites are in line with general trends in modern web design.

Studies have shown that 89% of consumers shop with a competitor after a poor user experience on a website. If you don’t want to share profits with your competitors, then definitely think about a redesign if you see a large number of website bounces.

Pay attention to the general appearance and individual elements – what photos did competitors take for their sites? Do they post videos? If so, which one, how is it integrated into the site?

Look at the layout of elements and information – what is on the first page? What’s hiding at the bottom of the page? Are pop-ups, or banners used? Are there social media links? And if so, where?

Competitor analysis will provide insight into web design trends in a specific business niche. It is also possible to find a unique technique that will distinguish you from other offers on the internet.

Still think you don’t need UX Competitive Analysis? Then we’ll convince you otherwise. Read our step-by-step guide.

4. Learn your target audience’s opinion

Remember that the web redesign you are doing is essential for the users. Therefore, their opinion must be taken into account. It’s unnecessary to write “on the forehead” that you will change the site’s design – it’s better to clarify what site changes users would like to see.

• If you have an online store, you may need to add new filters or change the order in which products are displayed?
• If the blog is missing tags or displaying the number of views of the article?
• If you are selling services, is it hard to find contacts? Or are there not enough customer reviews and photos with the work results?

Feedback can be obtained either directly (by making a mailing list with questions) or through social networks – by posting a survey in a group with different answer options.

5. Measure your website’s success with KPIs to know where the problem is

Determining a website’s key performance indicators (KPI) is one of the essential comprehensive promotion stages. It’s necessary to assess its success, compare advertising channels, and competently manage the advertising budget.

Key performance indicators (KPI) are a set of metrics that help assess the success of achieving the goals of an advertising campaign or the business as a whole. A correct set of KPIs for a website design should reflect the goals and objectives of the business.

It follows from the definition that KPIs will also be different for different projects since each business is unique to one degree or another and, accordingly, its goals will also be unique. Despite the variety of options, several fundamental indicators are universal for any internet project to one degree or another. So let’s consider them in more detail.

• ROMI (return on marketing investment) is the primary metric for business and any marketing activity on the network. This is an indicator of the return on investment and is, in fact, the ratio of the channel’s profitability to the costs that need to be invested in it. It shows the effect that every dollar invested in a particular advertising channel brings.
• Site visibility by semantic core – the percentage of the audience who saw the link to your site in the search engine results for specific keywords. This metric is needed to quantify targeted traffic growth potential through channels such as SEO and contextual advertising.
• Conversion rate – the ratio of the number of visitors who performed the target action on the site to the total number of site visitors for a certain period.
• CPC (cost per click) – the cost of attracting a target visitor. One of the main KPIs of any Internet activity. It is calculated as the ratio of the budget invested in the channel to the volume of targeted traffic attracted.
• CPA (сost per action) – the cost of performing a targeted action. This indicator allows you to calculate the profitability of the traffic you attract.

All of these metrics will help you determine how successful your website redesign has been.

6. Develop a corporate identity

We wrote about one of the reasons for redesigning a website- a change in corporate identity. But what if the rebranding is a consequence of a website redesign? If the site and identity are outdated, the corporate identity change should be done simultaneously as the resource’s new design. For example, update the logo and typography, create your brand book, and work on infographics and images creating a brand design. This is especially important for clients meeting a company offline. It is necessary to preserve the integrity of the organization’s image on the Internet and in real life. You can read more about how important branding is to your business in one of our latest articles, What is branding and why it matters.

Here is how our company’s brand identity look like:

7. Redesign those pages that are outdated

Start the web redesigning gradually so as not to put users in an uncomfortable environment. Small consecutive changes to the site will prepare users for a change in design. It’s necessary to correctly calculate the time for a complete redesign – too short a time will lead to customer dissatisfaction and a decrease in sales.

It’s best to start with the most frequently visited pages. For example, add new filters to the catalog, a new section, or a banner. It’s important to watch users’ reactions not to provoke an increase in the number of bounces. After small implementations and a positive response, you can proceed to more global things – color palette, block layout, and so on.

8. Check the technical characteristics of the site

After redesigning a website and introducing new elements, technical failures are possible. Errors in the operation of forms, order processing system, incorrect layout – all possible bugs developers should check without waiting for customers’ adverse reactions.

You also need to think about search engine optimization. After redesigning a website, search engines’ positions may sag due to changes in the number of pages on the site, content, and settings. Therefore, you must ensure that new texts are properly added to the site and adjust the parameters of the linking and other web pages.

9. Testing

Testing is an obligatory step before launching the updated site. Even if you tested everything during development, it’s a good idea to check again if the site displays correctly in all browsers; if buttons and order forms work, there are no broken links.

Redesigning a website is a lengthy process. After all the implementations, you need to track user reactions to certain elements, change the design and functionality as customer feedback accumulates. You may have to change texts, images, or entire blocks.

Even after completing all the steps described in the article, the website redesign should not end. You will need to interact with users daily, assess their behavior, and interact with the new interface.

You may have to promptly reconsider some solutions that seem to be successful, change some texts, or design specific pages that turned out to be incomprehensible to users. This is a normal process, so you should prepare for this work.

Gapsy Studio specialists will help you make a website UX audit, analyze usability, and make a unique proposal for your site based on the results. Based on the usability audit, we’ll make terms of reference for modernizing and improving your site. Our designers will develop a new concept for it, after which we will begin to implement the ideas. Finally, in stipulated terms or even earlier, we will present to your judgment the result of our creative team, which, we are sure, will pleasantly surprise you! To be confident in our words’ accuracy and professionalism, check out our projects on Dribbble and Behance and take a look at the services we offer.