Redesigning Your Website? Avoid These Mistakes at All Costs
Every few years, you need to redesign your website as it no longer is appealing to you or your users. As websites are the face of your company on the internet, it is important that you pay a lot of attention during the redesigning process. If you don’t execute the website redesign properly, there are high chances that you may repel your customers and prospects. On top of that, as there are millions of websites on the internet, website redesign is everything you need to stay ahead of the competition. If you want your website redesign to improve the influence of your brand online, avoid these mistakes at all costs:
Focusing only on design but not on content strategy
As you are going to be redesigning your web design, its common to focus on the aesthetics mainly. It is important that you update your web design so that all the elements look appealing and modern. However, it’s important that you also work on the content in your web design. If you don’t focus on content strategy, then your customers and prospects will have to go through heaps of search engine results to find your website.
As a result of this, your new web design won’t receive a large number of visitors, even if it is aesthetically pleasing. You should find out how your customers perceive your content so that you can improve it as much as possible. You should include relevant content in your web design such as interviews, industry news, and important articles. When the content on your new web design is relevant, Google will give you higher search rankings.
Forgetting to inform customers and prospects about redesign
One of the most common mistakes that people make is that they forget to inform their customers and prospects about the redesign. Just imagine how they would feel if they can’t find your website. As a result of this, your customers and prospects will assume that you either closed down or you have a new website. If this takes place, then you will lose out on a lot of traffic when you release the new web design for your website. On top of that, first-time users may not come back if they can’t find your website.
To avoid this scenario completely, make sure that your old website displays a message about the ongoing redesigning process. When you complete redesigning your website, make sure that you inform your customers and prospects about the changes you made to improve the user experience.
Ignoring mobile users
As there are billions of mobile users at the moment, one of the biggest mistakes you can commit during redesign is to ignore them. Mobile users make a large portion of the daily internet traffic. By forgetting to make your web design suitable for mobile users, you lose out on attracting thousands of visitors on a daily basis.
As a designer, you should ensure that your web design is compatible with smartphones. There shouldn’t be any decrease in functionality, just because mobile users have smaller screens when compared to those who use desktops and laptops. Also, make sure that your web design uses accelerated mobile pages (AMP) so that it loads instantly on smartphones.
Not going through the data of your website
If you want your new web design to be effective and efficient, it is vital that you go through the data/metrics of your website. These data points will give you a better idea of what are the problems with your website, and what is popular among visitors and what isn’t. For example, imagine if there is certain content on your website that doesn’t receive any traffic because it is outdated or irrelevant. Unless you look at the statistics of your website, you won’t know that this portion of your web design doesn’t receive any traffic. Benchmarks like these are extremely important as it can help you improve your new web design significantly. At the same time, benchmarks will also give you a better idea of where you can start the redesigning process.
Preferring aesthetics over functionality
When you start redesigning your website, your initial preference will be on aesthetics, rather than functionality. After all, you want to make sure that your web design looks great to you and your users. However, if you neglect functionality, it can lead to major problems when you release your new web design. As a result of this, visitors will leave your website when they encounter errors or bugs. If you wish to avoid this scenario completely, you should make sure that you focus on aesthetics and functionality at the same time.
If you avoid these mistakes at all costs, your website redesign will be effective and powerful. Better yet, why don’t you hand over the entire redesigning process to Mouth Media? Our professional developers and designers will avoid these mistakes while redesigning your website!