Website redesign is important for businesses for many reasons.
As technology changes and evolves, so do user expectations.
What was once an innovative website design can quickly become outdated and less effective over time.
In order to keep up with the competition and remain relevant, it’s important to regularly update your website design.
Additionally, as your business grows and changes, your website should reflect those changes. A website redesign can help you stay ahead of the curve, attract new customers, and improve conversions.
If you are also hiring a website developer to redesign your website, there are a few things that you must do.
Most importantly, you should know about those important things that you should take care of while redesigning your website.
Here, I have shared 12 crucial steps that you should follow during your website redesign.
Let’s begin!
#1 Take a backup
The first step in any website redesign process is to take a full backup of the existing website. Taking website’s backup helps to ensure that all important data and files are preserved in case anything goes wrong during the redesign process.
#2 Deploy to a new location
After taking the backup of the website, the next step is to deploy this version to a test environment and start the website redesign process there.
Redesigning the website on a new location will help ensure that the new website design does not adversely affect the current website or any of its features.
#3 Check one to one
If you want to keep the same content on your new website, you should make sure to check the content and pages.
Checking the content will ensure that your new website has the same information as your existing website. This is important if you want to maintain the same level of traffic and engagement with your audience.
#4 Use better content
A website redesign is a great opportunity to revisit and improve your website’s content. This is your chance to rewrite your content in a more engaging and effective way.
Keep in mind that your content should be unique, relevant, and interesting to your target audience.
Avoid using duplicate or plagiarized content, as this can harm your website’s ranking and reputation.
#5 URL conventions
If your website already has great search engine rankings, you should make sure that after redesigning your website, all the webpages should follow the same URL conventions as they used to. This is important because if you change the URL structure of your pages, you could lose the search engine ranking that you have worked so hard to achieve.
#6 Trackers
During the website redesign process, it’s important to ensure that all the important trackers like Google Analytics, etc. are properly migrated to the new website. It will help ensure that your website visitors have a seamless experience and that you don’t lose any valuable data.
#7 Check all the forms
Before you launch your website after the redesign, make sure that all the forms are working fine and that all the fields of your web form are validated properly.
This will ensure that your website is running smoothly and that users can fill out forms without any issues.
In many cases, web developers don’t pay attention to the testing & validation of the forms during the website redesign process.
As a result, either the website users are not able to fill out the form properly or the website owner is unable to receive the form submission values.
Therefore, it’s important to test all the forms on your website after your developer redesigns it.
#8 Check payment methods
If you are redesigning your eCommerce website, make sure that all the payment methods on your online store are working fine.
During the website redesign process, it’s likely that your web developer may use a sandbox payment module to make some test payments.
Therefore, you or your website builder should ensure that before making the redesigned website live, all the payment methods are working as they were before. This will avoid any confusion or inconvenience for your customers when they try to make a purchase on your site.
#9 Check SEO things
A website redesign can be a great opportunity to improve your site’s SEO.
Here is a checklist of things to keep in mind during and after your redesign:
- Make sure your URLs are still relevant and update any that have changed.
- Check for broken links and redirect them as needed.
- Update the sitemap and submit it to search engines.
- Ensure your title tags and meta descriptions are still accurate and reflect any changes to your site’s content.
- Review your keyword targeting and make sure you are still targeting the same keywords.
- Monitor your site’s traffic and organic search rankings closely to ensure there is no drop-off after the redesign.
#10 Check the loading speed
Before and after making the new website live, you or your web developer should test the loading time of the website and ensure that it doesn’t take too long to load the webpages.
This is important because if your website takes too long to load, potential customers may get frustrated and leave before even seeing what you have to offer.
A fast-loading website, on the other hand, will give visitors a good first impression and encourage them to stick around.
So make sure to test your site’s loading time before making it live!
Recommended post: Tips to enhance the loading speed of your website
#11 Check responsiveness
Another thing to test for and ensure before you make your new website live is its responsiveness.
Is your new website mobile-friendly?
Will mobile users be able to access & browse your website using their mobile devices?
If not, you need to hold your website launch.
If your redesigned website is not fully responsive, consult your website designer and get the necessary issues repaired to make your website mobile-friendly.
Why it’s so important for a website to be responsive?
- The websites that are not responsive have a low chance to rank on search engines.
- A mobile-friendly website tends to get a higher user-engagement rate than websites that are not responsive.
- The loading time of mobile-friendly websites is lesser as compared to those websites that are not responsive.
#12 Make the website live
After testing the website for its responsiveness, the next step is to make the website live. This is the final stage of the website redesign process. This is the time to make your website available to everyone.
There are a few things that you or your website developer can do to make the migration process seamless.
The first thing is to ensure that all content is complete and accurate. This includes checking for spelling & grammar errors, as well as ensuring that all information is up-to-date.
The second is to test all functionality to make sure everything works as intended. This includes testing forms, and other interactive elements.
Third, make sure all your links are working properly. Nothing is more frustrating than clicking on a link and getting an error message.
Finally, it’s important to review the overall design to make sure it is visually appealing and easy to navigate.
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