Planning for a Website Redesign
Whether you’re on the brink of designing a new website, just went through the website redesign process, or know that a website redesign is in your near future, keep in mind that what you do after the site launch is just as important as the process itself. What steps will you take to ensure the website stays up-to-date, the content remains fresh, and the security isn’t compromised? Do you have an internal team to manage these updates? If so, what weekly tasks have they been (or will they be) assigned?
The Importance of Fresh Website Content
Keep in mind that if your website content does not remain fresh (i.e. weekly blogs, regular copy changes, etc.) your site will be penalized by Google. What you will begin to notice is a decrease in your search engine rankings. No one likes to be on the second page of Google. That’s why it’s so important to have a solid plan in place to avoid this.
Increase Efficiency and Improve Profitability with Growth Driven Website Design
As a CEO or a VP of Marketing, I’m going to venture to guess that this is not your first website project you’ve been a part of. I’m also going to guess that your previous experiences were less than enjoyable. You spent months (dare I say, years) finishing the site design. By the time you released it, part of the site functionality and content was probably outdated. Furthermore, once released, you didn’t have the internal resources to keep the site up to date. 3-5 years later, you’re tasked with going through the entire process again.
Nothing about this scenario sounds enjoyable.
Enter: growth driven website design.
Growth driven website design is a fairly new concept in the digital marketing and web design world. It’s based off of the idea that you release a new website within 30 days. This “launchpad” site only consist of a few pages, and the need-to-have website elements (think, basic contact form, about page, and service pages).
After the site is launched, your focus is now on the website data and what that data tells you. Are people bouncing off the home page? If so, why? Are your contact forms converting? If not, why? Analyzing the data will allow you to make meaningful website changes on an ongoing basis. This keeps your website content fresh (which keeps the search engines AND your users happy).
Another cool part about growth driven website design is that it allows you to improve your site over time. After the initial site launch, you are encouraged to create a website “wish list”. Each month is an opportunity to chip away at the wish list, while also keeping an eye on the data to determine what changes are working, and what is not.
Growth Driven Website Design Pre-Launch Plan and Post-Launch Maintenance
With that in mind, here are some elements you should plan for when approaching your next website design project to ensure you will increase your site performance, improve conversions, and improve profitability.
Your Website Pre-Launch Plan
- Conduct persona interviews – securing this crucial data about your target visitors will inform everything from your website copy, to the website pages, to the site layout.
- Perform a keyword research – this information is critical to ensuring your website is search engine optimized upon launch.
- Research competitors and industry leaders – this will help you identify must-have site features, as well as how you can competitively position yourself online (among other things).
- Allocate responsibilities – if not a marketing agency, determine who will be in charge of your website strategy and ongoing changes.
Your Website Post-Launch Plan
- Install analytics – immediately upon site launch, install Google Analytics to begin gathering website data.
- Generate a wish list – assign each item an ‘Impact Level’ on a scale of 1-10, as well as how many hours this will take to complete. Both of those factors can guide your decision on what updates to make next.
- Plan for monthly reviews – At a minimum, you should be digging into your website data once a month to determine what’s working and what’s not. The website data should inform every website change you make.
- Keep your platform and plugins up-to-date – Regardless of which CMS you are using (WordPress, Joomla!, etc.) it’s important to be evaluating your site weekly for any plugin and component updates, as well as an core platform updates. This is imperative for security purposes.
A website redesign can be (and often is) a painful experience. But it doesn’t have to be. Instead of getting wrapped up in the approach that everything needs to be perfect upon site launch, it’s time to take a different approach. By letting the data do the talking, we can make changes based upon how users are actually interacting with your site, instead of making assumptions about your user behavior before the site is even launched.
Need help implementing an effective plan for continual website updates? Talk to an inbound expert today about how your organization could benefit from a growth driven website design.
