What is a website redesign? Do different types of websites need to be redesigned? How much time has passed since the design and development of the site, should it be redesigned? What does website redesign have to do with marketing and sales of businesses (store sites)? What is a redesign strategy and why is it important?
I don’t know about you, but I rearrange things in my room every once in a while. I get tired of them and the repetition of my room. Many people change the interior design of the house after some time. Change and transformation in the environment are necessary and effective in the mood and condition of people. Monotony bores everyone, even site users.
Most sites are not designed and built for a limited period or a few days. Users visit them constantly, so, naturally, the appearance of the site becomes monotonous and boring in their eyes. Maybe this uniformity is not too bad for news or content sites. But store sites are a different matter. The design and visual appeal of store sites is effective in attracting the user and encouraging them to buy.
In this context, I will tell you when it is necessary to redesign the website and how it should be done. I will also answer the questions that the content started with.
Table of Contents
Redesign of the site
Redesign is a topic related to both web design and digital marketing. It should be said that it is more related to digital marketing and business profitability than it is related to website design. For this reason, it is necessary to clarify that we are not going to discuss technical discussions and changes caused by new technologies in the development of the site.
Every site has two parts: the user side or client side (whatever the user encounters) and the server side or server side (what the user never sees and the backend developer deals with). More than 80% of website redesign happens on the client side. Of course, for the implementation and implementation of the new design, it is necessary to make changes on the server side of the website, and it may even be necessary to use a special framework or technology.
Looking at the history of website design, we realize that sites have become faster and more interactive over the last few decades. But if, for example, a site becomes faster and more dynamic using Ajax technology, it is not said that the site has been redesigned. As mentioned, redesign happens in the elements and parts of the site that the user interacts with, i.e. the user interface and user experience.
Definition of a website redesign
If you enter a store website and can’t find what you’re looking for in the menu, or if the product description is vague and doesn’t help you make a decision, or if there aren’t any high-quality photos of the products on the site, you won’t buy and leave the site. You leave The rest of the users have a similar behavior. This means the business loses and the customer loses.
Website redesign is the process of changing and updating the text and microcopy, structure, layout, composition, and map of the site to improve its performance and efficiency and convert more visitors into customers.
Open time for website design
Is it possible to specify a specific time for the redesign? For example, can it be said that if 3 years have passed since the life of a website, the site should be redesigned? Or if the business site has few visitors and does not sell well, the problem is with the web design and the site should be redesigned. No! It is not possible to specify a general rule for redesigning all sites.
Each site has its conditions and features, and its owner, considering various factors, concludes that the site should be redesigned. As it is clear from the definition of redesign, in its process almost all components of the site are changed. Therefore, website design is time-consuming and costly and requires financial and human resources. It should have specific goals and a plan and strategy for it through investigation and research.
To decide on the redesign of a store site, the business owner should pay attention to the following and find answers to various questions:
Reviewing and analyzing the efficiency and performance of the current site design
Is the site properly designed and developed from the beginning? Or because the business is new and does not have enough financial resources; a basic and not very attractive site, without user interface design and user experience, made for it? To find the answer to that question, it is necessary to collect data. The site owner must collect and evaluate the data according to the most important criteria for evaluating the success of e-commerce to reach the main problems of the site.
All site problems are not related to design. A site may be very well designed, but not SEO. For this reason, the site is not displayed to users in the search results and the site traffic (visitors) is low. Maybe the problem is digital marketing and advertising. The marketing team may be advertising to the wrong audience, which is not the target user of the business.
Long-term business goals and policies and their reflection on the site
Is the business a start-up and plans to become a big brand? Or does he have a shop and just wanted to have a site for online sales? If the business does not intend to grow in the long term and become a big brand, naturally it will not spend much on its site. Not all businesses have the financial resources to design or redesign a website.
In the design of the brand site, the identity and specific voice of that brand should be reflected. In addition, the user’s satisfactory interaction with the site has a direct impact on the site’s sales. So, whatever the site spends on UI/UX design, it is reasonable and justified.
Review and analysis of competitors, market, and new technologies
Did competitors redesign their sites? Did they rebrand? Did all the shopping sites add new technology to their site? The answers to these questions are very important for online businesses because research shows that
50% of customers see the design of a store site as a part of the brand, and for them, the site itself and interaction with it are as important as the products that are offered in it.
So, if your competitors designed a rebranding campaign and changed the web design by that campaign and made their site better and more attractive in every way (read, they transformed and renewed their product and brand in the eyes of the market and customers); You should seriously think about a redesign.
Sometimes search engine standards may change and require sites to add a special feature or design to their site.
Redesign strategy of the store website
The first step for formulating a website redesign strategy is data collection and analysis. Part of the work has been done in the previous stage and the decision-making process for the redesign. If the business owner and the product design, digital marketing, and SEO team conclude that the site should be redesigned after finding answers to the questions of the previous step; Now it’s time to go through the following steps and formulate a website redesign strategy.
1. Determine the business objectives of the website redesign
You have analyzed the current site, market, and competitors. So, you know how the site you currently have works and what are its strengths and weaknesses. If still in doubt, collect data on site performance. Site traffic, number of backlinks, overall site sales, user comments, feedback, and problems they reported to the business; are among the very important and helpful data.
If on the current site, the user interface, user experience, and microscopy (any text on the site that guides and directs the user to do something, such as the words that are written on the buttons) are designed by a specialist in each task, i.e. UI designer, UX designer, and UX writer. Has not been done; One of the most important goals of re-design should be basic and specialized product (site) design.
2. Determine the customer persona and the message the brand wants to convey to the market
The redesign is supposed to help business marketing and sales. Note that more sales are not achieved only by improving the user experience (user interaction with the site). Every business has its customers with its characteristics. The design of the site should be suitable for the business product and customers (business audience).
Therefore, it is necessary to determine what message and values the brand wants to reflect on its site and show to users. The design of the site, the microcopies, and the tone with which the content of the site is written should all serve the brand identity and match the brand’s voice. In addition, if the main customers of the business are a certain group, for example, mothers with babies, the design of the site should be designed with the customer persona in mind.
3. Determine the pages and content that should be preserved
The redesign is done to improve the overall performance of the site and attract more users. Naturally, not everything and all pages on a site are weak. The open strategy of website design should be such that it maintains the strengths of the site in the redesign. For example, if the site has a blog store where high-quality and valuable articles are published and SEO is very good, and as a result, it brings many users to the site; the blog site and its contents must be preserved for the site. It is necessary to redesign the site with special attention to the principles and the latest standards of SEO. If a page of the site is important for SEO (for example, its link is shared a lot on social networks), it should be preserved so that the site does not suffer.