Are you redesigning your website? If yes, this blog post may help you!
A website redesign is one of the most important steps that you could take to rebrand your online business. It is therefore very important to do it in the right way.
Here, we have shared some of the important steps that you must go through when redesigning your website. Following these tips will make your website redesign process smoother.
#1 Take a backup
Before anything else, you must back up your website. This is the most important step to take before you even start redesigning your website. If you have hired a website developer, it’s his responsibility to back up your website before starting the process of redesign.
You or your web developer can easily back up the website using the control panel of FTP. If you have control panel access, you can simply log in and go to the website backup wizard and follow the necessary steps to back up the website.
In case you don’t have control panel access, you can download all the files using FTP credentials however you will also need the backup of your website’s database.
If these terms sound jargon to you, hire a professional web developer to do this job. Hiring a web design company in India can save your website design investment.
#2 Deploy to a new location
The second step in the website redesign process is to deploy the existing website to a new location so that when you or your web developer can make the required changes to this version without affecting the live version of the website.
There are many web developers who start working on the website redesign directly on the live server which is not at all a good practice.
The website redesign process should be smooth for the users. They shouldn’t experience any hiccups while you are redesigning your website.
#3 Change design & features
The next step is to implement the new design for your website. And if you need any additional features to be added to your website, you can do that as well.
There are many pre-built themes that can be used to change the design of your website. However, you also have the option to choose a unique design that will require custom design and development. The cost to redesign a website can vary a lot depending on the fact whether you choose a readymade theme/template or you want a custom website design.
The same applies to the features. There are many plugins and modules that can be used with a CMS website to extend its functionality but if you need a specific feature that’s not available in any plugin or module, your website will have to change the codes of existing plugins. In some cases, your developer may be required to create a new plugin from the scratch.
#4 Use better content
After implementing a new design and new features to your website, it’s time to rewrite the content. Redesigning is a great opportunity for you to enhance the content of your website.
The content of your website is important in many ways:
- The content, especially SEO-oriented content, can help you to achieve higher rankings on search engines.
- The content can keep your targeted users engaged with your web pages.
- The sales-oriented content can help you get more conversions, leads, and sales.
It would be a great idea to hire a professional content writer who can provide you with professional writing skills while you are redesigning your website.
#5 URL conventions
This step is crucial for a website redesign process. Especially, if your website is already ranking on search engines, you must make sure that all the URLs of your new website are the same as the previous ones.
If the URLs of your web pages are changed while redesigning, you may lose all the rankings that your website has in search engines. As a result, your website may stop getting traffic to it after it’s redesigned.
This is one of the reasons why many websites fail to get desired results even after redesigning them with beautiful designs.
#6 Trackers
If. You are working on the marketing & advertising of your website, you must be using some tracking scripts from different platforms such as Google Analytics, Facebook Ads, Google Ads, etc.
When you redesign your website with a new theme, it’s important to migrate over all the necessary trackers from your existing website to the new one. If you don’t do so, your website still start capturing the necessary data that will be helpful for your marketing & advertising campaigns.
This is one of the most common mistakes that most newbie website designers do while redesigning their clients’ websites.
#7 Check all the forms
Before launching your new website, it’s crucial to test the functionality and validation of all the forms on your website.
Even a minor mistake in the form submission process on your website can cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars. This is because you never know if your potential customers couldn’t connect with you because of the malfunctioned forms.
#8 Check payment methods
If your website accepts online payments, then you must ensure that the payment system works even after you redesign your website. Most web designers do not test the payment features after they redesign a website. At Innomax, we always make sure to check the payment system under the sandbox (test environment) mode.
Only after making sure that the payment methods are working as they were before redesigning the website, do we proceed to launch the new website.
#9 Check SEO things
Checking the necessary SEO settings & configurations is very important especially if your website is already ranking on search engines and you have been already getting traffic to your website.
As a note of precaution, your website must follow the same URL structure, meta tags, etc. that it had before the website redesign. Failing to do so may result in a loss of traffic to your website. This will be a huge mistake to afford for your business. Don’t let this happen to you.
#10 Check the loading speed
After redesigning the website, make sure to check the loading speed before you launch your site. Various studies have provided that quick-loading websites tend to get more conversions & sales as compared to those sites that load slowly.
There are many tools such as https://tools.pingdom.com that will allow you to check the loading speed of your website. Not only will it check the loading speed of your site, but it will also show you the possible causes of the issues if your website is facing any.
Recommended post: How to optimize the loading speed of your eCommerce website
#11 Check responsiveness
Is your new website responsive (mobile-friendly)? Perhaps you don’t know about this.
Hers is one of the best free tools by Google through which you can check whether your website is responsive or not https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly
Why should you care about responsiveness?
Responsive websites enhance user engagement on your website for mobile & tablet traffic. In other words, your website will have a low bounce rate if it’s responsive.
Responsive websites are loved by search engines. This means that your website will be more likely to rank on the top pages of search engines for the appropriate keywords used on your web pages.
Responsive websites load faster on mobiles as compared to those websites that are not responsive.
To sum up, when you redesign your website with a new look and new features, you must test its responsiveness before you launch it.
Recommended post: 6 Reasons why your website should have a responsive design
#12 Launch the website
After testing your website for loading speed, responsiveness, and other crucial checks mentioned above, it’s time to launch your website and make it available to the public. Again, before you deploy your newly redesigned website, make sure to take a full backup of your existing website. Just in case you need it, you should have a complete backup.
How much time does it take to launch a redesigned website?
For a professional website developer, it may take only a few hours to make the website live after taking the backup of the old website.
#13 Analyze
The final step involved in the website redesign process is to analyze the performance of your new website. If you find any errors or bugs on your new website, you must consult your website designer to fix them.
Conclusion:
For some people, the website redesign process may be troublesome but if you take all the necessary precautions as mentioned above, you can make the whole process of website redesign interesting.
In fact, a website redesign is a golden opportunity for you to rebrand your company and its services.
It’s a great opportunity for you to present yourself in a different and unique way. So, hire a website design company in India today to redesign your website and get all the great benefits associated with it.
