This ever changing web forces every website to stay updated. That’s why you need to redesign your business website from time to time. And in our days, it has never been more important to keep it simple.
Here are a few critical steps to a simple and stress-free website redesign.
In-depth analysis of your website’s data. Carefully review the data showcasing how people use your actual site. If you want to keep this process simple you have to figure out which elements you absolutely need. You should use basic and free tools such as Google Analytics to find out insights into your website’s performance. After reviewing all this user data, you can create a list of must-have functions.
Decide what your site should and shouldn’t do. With the right data reviewed, you should be able to eliminate many unused features. Then, you can rank the remaining functions according to their importance to accomplishing your goals and begin the process of laying out pages. Use web-based brainstorming and outlining tools to create rough page designs that match your new redesign strategy. WorkFlowy (free for up to 500 stored ideas) and MindMeister are some of the ideal tools that help you plan content flow, feature sets and basic layouts. In the end, you should be able to create page layouts that include the most important functions.
Find the right website solution for your needs. Most business have content that can fit in a small amount of website space. Therefore, you can choose from various hosting website services. The easiest hosted services require no coding experience and manage everything from security to upgrades, creating mobile-friendly features that can work well on tablets and other devices.
Emphasize social media on your website. Place important social media content on your site, such as blog posts, updates and video. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and other social networks have third-party apps that integrate their tools into your site and mobile devices.
When it’s up and running, test your new site. First of all, you need to decide on how to measure your site’s success or failure. This can definitely vary, but useful metrics include email list sign-ups, additional followers and conversions into phone calls or chat sessions. For all of these, use tools such as Optimizely or Google Content Experiments (free within Google Analytics package).
It’s really important to have a rock-solid plan to track your site performance and know what resources you need to manage and update your new design. The online world is always changing – and so should your new site.