Anybody who’s ever run a successful business knows that a business with no effective communication to its customers is a sign of a dead business. And in today’s heavily technology-driven times, gone are the days of being limited to traditional signages and flyers. An outstanding website is a must!
What exactly do we mean when we say an “outstanding website”? One aspect is if it has superior performance when run live. This means that your target audience gets to have an incredible user experience navigating the website, and thus are able to maximize all the great content and features you placed there.
To help you determine if your website is running great from your customers’ point of view, there are reliable companies to help you do just that. One leading supplier for this need of web application testing is https://qawerk.com/services/web-application-testing/.
But hey, we’re getting ahead of ourselves here. Before we get to test a website’s live performance, it must first be equipped with good design. In this article, we will discuss the seven steps to a safe website redesign to let you get optimum results on customer interaction.
Your Ultimate Guide to Creating a Website Redesign Strategy, the Right Way
The seven organized steps in website redesign can be broken down into 3 groups: planning stage, content creation stage, and running stage.
The Planning Stage
1. Goal Setting: As with all work, in order for it to be successful and to have a concrete direction, a goal must be clearly defined. The same holds true for a website redesign.
To help you establish your goal, put into writing your answers to the following key questions:
- Who is your target audience? These are the people you are looking for to frequent your website or patronize your business.
- What do you want to achieve once these target audiences are on your website? Do you want them to be educated or informed? Do you want them to be entertained or amused? Is the objective for e-commerce or to drive them to your physical stores?
- Do you have website pegs? Are these identified website pegs aspirations that you want your website to have a similar vibe to? Or are they websites you feel your website must look nothing like?
2. Definition of Scope: This stage would be a natural second step once you have identified goals. In this stage, you are basically designing the concrete schedule by which the goals set will be achieved or enfleshed against a target launch date. Drafting a contract detailing the timelines with your developer would come in this stage. Making use of a project Gantt chart would also be a big help.
3. Website Framework/ Sitemap Creation: As an architect or engineer drafts a blueprint before actual construction commences, so must a great website be founded on a sitemap or framework. This stage basically maps out, similar to an organizational chart, the website page hierarchy and what each one will contain. This stage will also help you envision in which section of the website each of your objectives will be met. Should there be gaps in your website against your end goal, this step will also clue you in early on so you could add more pages, links, etc.
The Content Creation Stage
4. Text Content: This will be the actual meat of your website, so to speak, so this stage is very crucial. In this stage, you must put a great deal of thought into the writing style you will use to really draw your audience in and keep them hooked. Typography also plays a big role in the way your website comes across.
And oh, don’t ever forget about the all-important SEO or search engine optimization. It’s a must that the keywords you use in your content as well as set for your website will put you on top of the search engine lists when your target audience looks up relevant content.
5. Visual Content: You wouldn’t want your website to look like a long tedious chunk of pure text, but you wouldn’t want it to look like a mere gallery of pictures either, so planning visual content is essential.
Planning for your website visuals should be guided by the company or brand’s color schemes and image. Furthermore, professionally taken images also up the conveyed vibe that your company is legit and reliable. Lastly, appropriate and adequately used visuals also increase audience clicks, engagement, and ultimately sales conversion.
The Running Stage
6. Testing Stage: Once all the website’s pages, links, texts, and visuals are in place, it would be wise to have a controlled group of individuals test it out. This would include making sure all the visuals are positioned the way they were intended and there are no typographical errors in the texts.
7. Public Launch Stage: Once your website has passed all the rigors of the testing stage, you are now ready for public launch. Congratulations and enjoy the fruits of your hard work!
Take heed, though, that web design is a never-ending process. There may be bugs that could arise, new features that you would add on along the way, and the likes.