Website Redesign

Is your website looking old and mouldy? Was it designed by a "friend of a friend" who was "dabbling" in web design four, or more (gulp!), years ago?

If so, it's probably time for a website makeover with a fresh new website redesign. Here are some other indicators that it may be time for a website redesign...

Why Redesign Your Website?

1. Your website looks old and outdated. If your website was built more than 2 or 3 years ago, odds are that it's looking pretty dated. Some signs of an outdated website include having a Flash intro or splash page, pages that use frames, 3D style graphics and buttons, and text that was created as images instead of HTML.

2. Your website no longer reflects your business or your brand. Your website is a reflection of your company. If your company has changed or you've updated your image and branding, you should get a website redesign to reflect that.

Has your business experienced significant growth? Have you introduced new products or services? Has your company's mission changed? If so, a website redesign will ensure that your website effectively communicates where your business is going, not where it's been.

3. Your website isn't user friendly. Your website should offer your visitors, clients, and prospects an easy way to find the information they need about your business, products, and services.

If the information your visitors need is buried deep within your site, and your website navigation is confusing and poorly structured, visitors will leave. How much could that cost your business in potential revenue?

One of the first steps in our website redesign process is to evaluate your current site's pages and content to understand how useable your website architecture is. This informs an important part of our website redesign recommendations.

4. Your website isn't ranking well in the search engines. If your previous designer didn't discuss search engine optimization (SEO) with you when your site was originally built, your site is probably not ranking very well in search engines such as Google, Yahoo, or MSN for keywords valuable to your business.

Poor (or non-existent) rankings in the search engine results are generally the result of poor HTML design or coding on your website. This can include pages that use frames, text created as images instead of HTML, missing HTML tags, sites done entirely in Flash.

5. Your website isn't generating leads or inquiries to help you make sales. If your website was designed a few years ago, odds are that it wasn't built with marketing in mind. At best, it was designed as an online "brochure" for your business without any mechanisms to follow-up or close sales, generate and bring in new prospects, or ease the workload of your customer service or support staff.

If your website was designed without any clear marketing goals for your visitors (purchase a product, fill out an email form, pick up the phone and call, etc), it isn't as effective as it could be. Make sure that you have a clear idea of your marketing goals, and make them a primary part of your website redesign.

6. Your website is costing you too much to update it (or you can't update it at all). This is particularly true if your website is done entirely in Flash, all the text is image based, or worse -- your webmaster is holding your site hostage and you don't have direct access to your web server.

If you submit changes to your webmaster for the website, they could be the problem. We've heard plenty of horror stories from clients where their previous webmaster would take weeks (!) to implement changes (if at all) and then charge exorbitant fees.

If any of the above issues applies to your website, it's time to redesign.

Before you move ahead with your new website, you should be aware of some website redesign considerations to make sure your traffic doesn't drop after you relaunch.

Website Redesign Process

Our website redesign process is exactly the same as our design process for new websites, except for one extra inital step -- stats tracking and analysis of your current website metrics. In particular, this involves an analysis of your current website to get data on which pages receive the most traffic, and which pages aren't getting as much traffic as they should be.

If you don't already have website stats or analytics involved, we'll set it up for you so that we can start gathering data on your site while we work on your business analysis and concept development.

Tell us what you want to accomplish and you’ll get the website you want, designed to meet your objectives and reach your audience – on time, and on budget.

Take a look at our portfolio of work, then contact us for a free consultation. We look forward to hearing from you.