Is it time for a Web site redesign?

You look at your website and start thinking it’s not quite what it should be.  You want it to be more eye-catching, more dynamic, and you want it to present your business in a whole new way, especially in this still-wild world of Internet marketing.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to redesign your website, as long as you have a good reason why you want to do it.

In some ways, a website redesign is harder than designing it the first time.  Users are accustomed to your current site and might have trouble adjusting to the new one.  If they can’t figure it out right away, they may get so frustrated that they abandon the site for good.  That’s why you need to redesign your site for the right reasons.

Here are some bad reasons for doing it:

You want to shake things up.

Your customers might want to check out new products on your site, but they don’t want a new user experience.  If you redesign your website just for the sake if it, you’ll alienate the very people that helped you get your business off the ground, which will make Internet marketing more difficult going forward.

Your CEO/owner wants it

Your job as the Internet marketing specialist is to create a web experience that generates traffic, conversions, and sales.  If your CEO wants to change the website, you need to make sure there’s a business-related reason for doing it and that the change will ultimately help your business and not hurt it.

Someone else suggested it

If your marketing strategy is solid, you’re already using analytics to tell you which pages, products, and messages generate the highest responses.  Any decisions you make about your website should be based on those results, so unless that someone is your most profitable customer, it’s best to let you and your team make those big decisions.

On the other hand, these are reasons you SHOULD consider a website redesign:

You want more people to find you

If your website traffic isn’t as heavy as you’d like, there may be a design issue.  Maybe your text isn;t keyword-optimized.  Perhaps your photos and videos don’t have the right meta-tags, or worse, you don’t have enough visual content to keep visitors interested.  Whatever the reason, a review and redesign of your website may generate the clicks and traffic you need to grow your business.

You want your visitors to be more responsive

Some websites provide relevant information to visitors, but nothing to motivate action.  Do people find your website, browse for a few seconds, and then leave and never come back?  If so, you might need to redesign it with hard-to-miss banners and easy navigation tools that make visitors want to browse the site and, more importantly, interact with it.

You want your site to generate more revenue

As Internet marketing focuses more and more on monetizing websites, your site needs to be a direct revenue driver, so redesign it accordingly.  Add fields for featured sales and products.  Write stronger calls to action and place them in big, bold banners.  Add e-commerce tools that make ordering quick and easy.  With the right design, your website can start generating higher sales and more revenue.

Like every other part of your business, your website has to do more than just look pretty; it has to function in a way that impacts your company’s success.  If want to redesign your site, think about why and what this new design will do.  If you follow the tips above, you’ll know when the time is right.