Introduction to revamping a website
We live in the age of the Internet, and it became a crucial part of any aspect of our lives. The amount of content that humanity is exposed to is enormous. Just imagine that amount of websites are already exceeded the two billion mark if the Web tribunal is to be believed.
What does it mean for businesses? It means competition. According to this source, only the E-Commerce industry has over 20 million websites and is the most popular type of website across all industries. The state of competition in the Healthcare, Manufacturing, or Retail industries is just as tough, so your company needs to be represented properly to survive and strive.
Taylor and Francis Online claim that there are only 50 milliseconds for users to form an opinion about your website. Will it be a good one? Do you need a website redesign strategy? Do you need help with website navigation design? What website redesign cost will be for your case? You can answer those questions yourself, ask your experts, or even get a consultation from an experienced software development provider. Our goal is to share our experience and expertise with you and bring you one step closer to business website redesign!
“Websites promote you 24/7: No employee will do that.”
— Paul Cookson
What does it mean to redesign websites?
By definition, a redesign process is conducted to improve user experience and make adjustments to such elements as navigation, layout content, back-end functionality, and tech stack.
The average cost to redesign a website may differ dramatically depending on your goals, the number of features you want to implement, and the approach you take. Your goals may include:
- boost the number of conversions
- improve the loading speed of pages and overall performance
- ensure the responsiveness on any screen or device
While working on your website redesign project plan, you should keep in mind, that you will eventually need to cover both Front-end (the part that users are able to see) and Back-end (the functional code and everything that happens under the hood).
Here are the key things to consider while developing a project plan for a website redesign:
| Business focus | Determine how your business can benefit from features you want to implement |
| Data | Find out how you can get maximum value out of available data on your users |
| Traffic | Discover the ways for potential users to end up on your website |
| Navigation | Work on the best ways for users to navigate your website and implement them |
| Organization | Think about the ways to organize the content in the most convenient manner |
| Marketing | Figure out your plan to turn visitors into leads |
| Accessibility | Make sure to provide the best experience for people with disabilities |
| Performance | Work with your team on delivering the best technical performance possible |
What are the reasons for a website redesign?
There are a variety of scenarios when your business requires website redesign services, here are some of the most common:
- Your website no longer reflects the values of your brand and doesn’t bring enough value to your customers
- The displayed products or services do not reflect your current offerings
- Your target audience had changed
- The website is not suitable for your sales team, and they can’t do much with it in order to attract more customers
- The design looks date or the functionality does not match the current market requirements
- The content hadn’t been updated in a long period of time
- You do not receive enough conversions from your traffic
- You need help from a website redesign agency to optimize your complex navigation
- Your users have problems with understanding what they should do on your website
- The visitors don’t spend much time on the important pages
- Long loading times of your website lower its position in the Search Engines as a penalty for low performance
- Compared to the top competitors in your niche, your website needs at least a homepage redesign, to not get lost in the shuffle
There are many more reasons, of course, and every case is unique and has its unique challenges. However, if you feel like you need website redesign services, it is probably late, and you already lost some revenue. Luckily, this website redesign planning guide is aimed to change this situation.
Website redesign tips: Making improvements step-by-step
Measure your current performance
Your web redesigning process for your pages should always start with determining your current metrics. It will give you a clear understanding of what moves should be taken and help you estimate the average cost to redesign a website for your particular case. Areas, in which you can monitor your performance may include the number of visitors and the number of unique visitors, bounce rate, the amount of time spent by visitors, the most effective keywords, the number of new leads, etc.
Set tangible goals
To get all benefits of a website redesign, it will be a good idea to know exactly why you are doing it. Discuss it with your existing team and ask experienced professionals for a consultation, when necessary. After you analyze your data, it will be easier to set goals. Examples may include: boosting the number of visitors, reducing bounce rate, increasing the average time spent, obtaining more leads, improve SEO parameters.
Work on your branding
Before making any changes, revisit the message you are spreading through your content. Remember, the visitors should know in the shortest amount of time, what you or your company is doing and what value they can get out of it. The brand message should be consistent across all pages. Otherwise, all of your site redesign efforts may end up meaningless.
Developing buyer personas
Speaking of the marketing side, it will be a great idea to develop buyer personas for each visitor, to model what changes will impact certain personas you may have.
Keep your SEO practices strong
This is one of the core things you should consider when you redesign an existing website. When you can’t be discovered online, how the users will end up visiting your pages? All actions to improve conversions and sales will be simply useless.
First of all, determine what pages bring the biggest amount of traffic and focus on improving them. After that, work with an SEO expert on adding more relevant keywords to existing pages, in order to power up the weaker destinations of your website. Hiring an external SEO expert or even a team of experts can increase the cost of a website redesign, but in the long run, it will be definitely worth it.
Keep the competition in mind
Don’t waste too much effort on monitoring your direct competitors, but still, keep an eye on what they are doing. You may uncover an effective SEO approach or content strategy, that might perform just as well, or even better, for your business. For SEO activities, there are plenty of easy-to-use tools that will allow you to make conclusions on a high level.
Be aware of your best-performing pages
Unfortunately, the website redesign process can hurt your business, if not done right. The thing is, you may already have a lot of well-performing pages, and you should be aware of them and protect their status during any website makeovers.
How much does it cost to redesign a website?
In a nutshell, there is no such thing as a typical website design cost. Every case is unique, as well as the number of actions that need to be taken to get the desired results. For some businesses, just changing the logo in the footer will be enough, and for some, developing an entirely new website from the ground up will be required.
The cheapest way is to hire freelance experts or do it yourself, if you have enough expertise, of course. Freelance web design prices are relatively low. The biggest drawback with this approach is the fact that you will have to hire each expert separately and there is no guarantee that they will deliver the expected results. The price with this approach can range from $100 to $3000, for a relatively simple scope of work.
Professional web design costs are significantly higher, as well as the value they can bring to your organization. Cooperating with an agency, custom website design costs can be in the range of $15,000 to $30,000. However, if you are looking to build something more complex and sophisticated, be ready for the fact, that the price will be $40,000+.
FAQ
What is a redesign strategy?
This is a holistic, step-by-step approach, aimed to improve your existing pages that represent your business. The strategy includes elements from business analysis, marketing, Front-end, and Back-end software development, as well as SEO and content creation. Having this strategy in place will ensure your success with a reasonable website update cost.
How to organize website redesign?
You can do it yourself or hire an experienced software developer as a partner. Whatever option you choose, be ready for a complex process that requires efforts from multiple departments in your organization.
What are the benefits of redesigning a website?
Probably, the biggest benefit is that you will ultimately increase your revenue. This increase comes from improving the relationships with your customers, strengthening your brand image, and delivering a better user experience compared to other companies in your market.
How often should websites be redesigned?
There is no universal answer to the question of how often should you redesign your website because multiple factors are involved. First, it is the design aspect, because if competitors look better you will be in trouble. The second is the performance, you need to keep up with industry standards. Finally, your products and services might change over time and the website should reflect that.