How to Avoid Common Website Redesign Errors?
Businesses run on visual representations nowadays. The pandemic has led everyone to live their lives virtually and organizations are not excluded from this either. In this case, Websites “the actual representation of your business” need to be pitch-perfect. When target users want to know about your businesses, websites come to your rescue. Websites are not only a great way to target new customers, but also provide credibility and trust for your users & business. & that’s the reason why entrepreneurs outreach to a UI/UX design company to professionally design & develop their company’s website.
There are several main criteria why a website is crucial for businesses, but having a poorly designed website does not serve the purpose. A fully enhanced website brings a lot of new opportunities for a new business, hence the design of the website should be in line with the purpose and goals of the businesses. Like a tours and travel business website can’t really have floral graphics. Choosing the ideology and type of website entirely depends on the nature of the business. Hence, the web designing firms following the futuristic trends of UI/UX always win the game!
These days, analyzing the website timely and keeping it updated with the latest trends is a must for any business’s survival. A poorly designed website can not only harm your company’s reputation but also cost you some precious business leads. Hence, the poorly designed website needs to be revamped with attractive animations and content related to your business.
Here are the parameters you can ask yourself if you feel your website needs redesigning:
- Does your website look antiquated?
- Are your customer conversion rates dropping?
- Is your website user-friendly or not?
The website revamping task isn’t easy but really solves most of your business challenges. Here are a few common website redesigning mistakes that others have made and cost them zillions. Taking on a full detour in the blog, explaining the most challenging obstacles we experience during website development services, to help you avoid expensive and time-consuming pitfalls.
Top Mistakes to Avoid During a Website Redesign
1. Not Outlining The Clear Scope Of Work:
While starting a complex project such as website redesigning, articulating the scope of work is really important. The scope needs to outline the process and ownership of work in each phase of work, all the anticipated elements that will be completed with each stage, the no. of reviews that need to be set with the client, and to streamline the rework to meet the client’s expectations. When working as a contracted partner, having a scope of work isn’t only about your client, but also about involving the internal stakeholders as well. Think of it as the foundation for the rest of the project, and a way to ensure that surprises will be minimized throughout the process.
2. Forgetting About Who The Target Audiences Really Is
The website that is being planned, needs to speck and tackle the challenges faced by the target audience – those prospective or current clients and consumers with whom you do or want to do business. While the clients come to your website to see the people and culture of your business but, moreover they are coming to your business to find a solution for the challenges faced by them in the day to day life. Aiming for the target to understand your business ethics and the services you provide is more crucial than devising a content strategy that your internal team wants to communicate. Get inside of your audience’s minds and understand what they are looking for? This might help in designing the website strategy better.
3. Designing By Committee
While working in big teams, having people agree with the same thought is tough. One can easily fall into the trap of designing by committee – a thought where the project stagnates until every stakeholder isn’t agreeing to one point. This is a time-consuming process, which can delay the project or worse, over exceeds the budget. The team has key delegated decision making to see more success in such web designing projects. While one can consider staff opinions, the final call depends on the person designated to meet the milestone!
Also Read: 5 Web Development Platforms to Design Your Website
4. Not Knowing How To Get The Content Developed
Content development is one of the topmost contributors to the delays in website redesign projects. While creating a content strategy one needs to be sure of how many pages are required for your business and build a rough layout based on the information that needs to be included in the web pages. Once done, the work can be forwarded to the content writer. Particularly for the websites that have specific targeting for the audiences, a new content copy and images need to be put together to create a new design for the website. Signing up with a content development agency might be of help here which can help in the message delivery to be on point of the website. Even if you are planning to write the content yourself or via your team, make sure to take out the time to go through the content so that you can confirm that the copy represents your organization, its services, and ethics honestly.
5. Trying To Achieve It All At Once
Businesses find MVPs to be the most cost-effective way to launch a website, one of the leanest ways to launch the website in Phase 1. Breaking down the projects into pieces is the most far-fetched and sorted idea which helps most of the organization in fulfilling their revenue strategy while meeting the tight deadline. Breaking down the project by highest priority functionality is one way to keep things on track and save on cost. Let us explain to you with an example: While running an eCommerce website, you may want to develop a more streamlined website for your store and want to add a subscription model for your users. Instead of delaying the project, consider whether the website can launch to get the store up and running first. And once the website is running, you can strategize on how to get the subscription model up on the website. This will allow the users to keep on purchasing online and they won’t go to your competitors for the same product.
6. Not Making Your Website Mobile-Friendly
With millions of users using mobile devices to browse the internet with Google’s algorithm changes, not having a mobile-friendly website will surely hurt your business. As per the studies, users who open websites on their mobiles are much more in numbers in comparison to the ones who open it on their laptops and desktops. This, creating a web design responsive and mobile-first website is much more beneficial now more than ever! Companies providing UI/UX services generally design websites by keeping mobile users in mind.
7. Not Having a Proper Content Strategy
Content along with an SEO strategy is something that every team forgoes. Including keywords that can be used for business promotions while writing the content is a must-have strategy and metrics. Content is as important for the website as is its design and functionality. Find out all the opportunities that were there in your previously written content and try to make it better for your redesigned website. Focus on writing relevant content keeping in mind your services and users’ requirements that can be promoted keeping the future perspective.
8. Ignoring Timelines
When beginning a web development project, we have to make sure that you meet the deadlines set in the starting. Stretching a website development project for years can make it an irrelevant website with no update on the latest design and content trends, then what’s the point of getting the website redesigned really? It’s tough to keep a check but while getting into a web development project, confirm that key stakeholders are available to provide feedback within the requested time frame. It is far more advantageous to launch a strategic website and continue to optimize it over time.
Also Read: 8 Reasons Why Website Maintenance is more important than development
Key Takeaways:
A website redesign is a big task to undertake and can have a positive impact on the business. Hence, it’s important to have a Web Development Company on board to complete the said task. They can help you out with proper planning and internal and external stakeholder engagements. With this, your business will be on the right track to relaunching your website on budget, timely, and strategic release.