How to Plan for a Website Redesign

Written by Ethan Gardner Web Design

Websites are great ways to keep current with your customers, but what happens when your needs outgrow your site? Taking time redesign might be just what your business needs to reach the next step.

A redesign can be a daunting task, but using web analytics data and careful planning take the sting out of the process. In this article, I will show you some preparations I am making for a redesign of my site that you can adapt to your own website.

Plan Your Work, Work Your Plan

The most important part of a redesign is to coordinate a plan and put it into action. Lists are invaluable here. Here are a few things to keep in mind when doing a work-up of your list.

• Is a redesign necessary?
• What are the primary and auxiliary objectives of the redesign?
• What needs to be changed to meet these objectives?
• What should be kept from the current version of the site?
  

When to Redesign Your Website

Websites need to continually accommodate new information, stay organized in the process, and properly represent your brand. When they no longer fit that criteria, it is necessary to redesign. In my case, my needs have evolved to the point that it is time to refresh my design and reorganize.

Since the initial launch, my brand has gone from unknown to receiving unsolicited leads through my site, word-of-mouth referrals, qualified traffic from search engines, and routine outsource work from other design firms. I need to make sure that my redesign conveys intelligence and experience.

Like most businesses, I started with an idea. I was anxious to start freelancing, so I pieced the site together as I wrote new content. Now that I have all the pieces, I am better equipped to make some measurable improvements.

Decide What to Change

Begin by taking inventory of the content on your site and thinking about its purpose. For my site, I evaluated every area including the user experience, design, content, and usability. Here are my thoughts based on the evaluation.

Design Changes

This is the tricky part since I need a design that works for a blog, portfolio, and is appealing to both businesses and other designers. Giving the pages an updated look with more versatility is my primary objective for the pending redesign.

I plan on achieving this through use of transparency, texture, and progressive typography. While I use a baseline grid for the current version, I can do more with type to differentiate my site from others in my field by using a more progressive font stack. More contrast between the headings and body copy will be added by using variations in size, color, and case.

In the redesign, I will also use the sidebar as an area for cross-promotion and vary page layouts to stimulate visual interest. Joomla is relatively open in terms of layout, and I plan on building more flexibility into the template to achieve my goals.

Over on the services page, I can improve the look by giving a custom designed icon to each of the offerings.

Content Changes

By looking at Google Analytics, I notice that the About page and FAQ pages are under-performing in comparison to other pages on my site.

Since I also know that the most of the visits to my site are by new visitors, the ineffectiveness of the about page is concerning. While I tried to adhere to the principles of a perfect about page, it is clear now that there isn’t enough personality to make it engaging. In my redesign, I know this is an area that needs attention.

While it is understandable that the FAQs page isn’t going gangbusters, I notice that the FAQs for other design firms gets an anemic amount of traffic. The exit percentage for this page is fairly low, so I know that the problem with this page is its findability and not the content. Work from other design firms is a great source of consistent work, and I don’t want to ignore this area in the redesign.

While researching other sites, I also realize an opportunity. Creating a new page to detail my design process will provide value to my visitors by giving a written overview of what they can expect if they should choose to hire me.

User Experience Changes

The site is easy to use as is, but there are some things I could do to create a more streamlined experience. This site currently uses the default Joomla search which is limited to 20 characters, and while it is usable, there are better options available. The Joomla search will be removed in favor of Yahoo BOSS during the redesign.

The navigation will be enhanced with Mootools effects and the portfolio will get a sleeker experience while incorporating larger pictures and/or Mootools modal box. I also hope to make additional performance optimizations to the site to make it even faster.

I was also hoping to add a comments to the blog, but I am holding off until Joomla integrates their native comments system with the release of 1.6 sometime later this year.

Decide What to Keep

The idea behind a redesign is to make improvements to areas that need changing and avoid undoing the things that are working well. There are a few things from the current iteration of the site that will also be featured on the redesign.

Design Keepers

The day/night themes that change using JavaScript will stay, and the redesign will most likely be another dark, nature-inspired theme. I know nature-inspired designs are becoming quite popular at the moment, so I’m really feeling pressure to create something unique to stand out from the crowd.

Content Keepers

From looking at Google Analytics, the most traffic aside from individual blog posts are the home page, portfolio, and contact page. I’ll tweak the layout for these pages, but the copy will remain nearly identical to what it is today. I’ll also keep the content that is in the footer including the links to my various social media profiles.

The most important thing is to make sure that I maintain my search engine rankings. I am very fortunate to have high search engine placement in my local Cincinnati, Ohio market, as well as some targeted niches on a national basis. Since this accounts for most of my traffic, I need to make sure that I don’t shoot myself in the foot by making the site harder for search engines to index.

How to Manage the Redesign

By using analytic data and feedback from users, you can gain great insight and direction when it comes time to redesign. Yes, a redesign is a daunting task, but I have learned that a list is the best way to stay on track with your objectives and increase your chances of success. If you have a large site, it might be necessary to break the list down into individual sections or get more granular, but overall the process is the same.

Now that the plan has been formulated, it is time to put it into action.