Website Redesign: Steps, Strategy, Cost
Your website is the first thing users will see by Googling your company, and that may sound cool and terrifying simultaneously. Website redesign is a powerful and challenging process that allows you to rethink your platform, convert leads, and build a solid online presence.
When you decide to redesign a website, you may be overwhelmed with numerous confusing steps and be afraid of the amount of work to be done. Therefore, Limeup experts created this article to help you define the crucial steps in the how-to guide and acquaint you with common mistakes and strategies.
Keep reading, and you will learn how to redesign a website, what this process is all about, how often you have to conduct platform rethinking, how much it costs, and more.
What is a website redesign?
Website redesign stands for a complete change of your platform, starting with the color palette and to the backend and coding. Is it a challenging task? Yes, but it’s essential to conduct such a redesign when you understand it’s time for changes.
On average, business owners and their teams can rethink the existing website and ensure it has to be optimized within SEO, or it needs more precise colors that depict the brand’s identity. Moreover, according to the survey, 94% of users said that their first impression depends on the design.
Therefore, if you want your website to push users towards a purchase, provide them with a user-friendly and convincing design. This whole term covers fonts you use, colors, images, content, SEO, and more. Depending on your situation, you may need to hire, for example, web design companies in the UK who will create your solution from scratch, or maybe you need just a simple platform rethinking.
Before jumping into more details, let’s consider the most common website redesign process questions that we mostly receive in our practice:
- Can you make our website look more professional?
- Our website design is old, can you make it look more up-to-date?
- Can you improve users’ perception of our website?
- Can you improve the usability of our website?
You have to clearly understand your target audience, customer needs, what elements work the best, and other crucial details.
How often should you redesign a website?
There are no predefined terms since it depends on your website design and how well it performs. You will notice that your website no longer meets your requirements, for example, you have more and more visitors, thereby, your platform is wrecking. Or else your site has a bad ranking in search engines, and you need to improve it.
Website performance metrics.
Some metrics allow you to measure the website performance, for example:
- Poor user experience. It’s a holistic term that stands for users’ frustrations, too complex website structure, lack of visitor engagement, information overload, outdated content, and more.
- Slow page loading. You have only 3 seconds for the page to download, or else the visitor is more likely to leave your site. It means that you need to update your software, change big-sized images and the amount of content, or maybe there’s a need to change the software architecture.
- No mobile-friendliness. Especially paying attention to this option, it’s vital to present an adaptive design since almost 60% of users use mobile devices for online browsing.
- Bad conversion rate. It means that your visitors are not becoming your clients; they don’t make purchases, and your website is just not working correctly. There are a lot of reasons, for example, bad performance, outdated content, poor CTAs, etc.
- No website’s focus. If the visitors can’t understand your niche while looking at your site, it doesn’t operate correctly. Communicate your goals since, for example, 51% of Gen-Z consumers would ensure a brand aligns with their values before making a purchase.
- Bad navigation. This essential point is one of the reasons why people leave websites. Frustrating and confusing experiences don’t work well on your brand image, therefore, be sure to consider seamless navigation.
- Negative feedback from users. You can use the insights and implement even better solutions. For example, you may use various tools to collect feedback, user interviews, or usability tests.
- Not meeting business objectives. In such conditions, your business doesn’t attract new customers to a website.
Another big alert that website redesigns are needed is low SEO ranking, thereby, you have to consider SEO as the core value when rethinking your platform. In this case, you may need to change the content and keywords, architecture, images, and other essential options.
How to redesign a website?
Being one of the most experienced web development companies in the UK, we want to present you with a way to rethink and redesign a website based on our expertise and case studies. Let’s dive into the details.
Step 1: Research
At Limeup, we start a project by defining and researching the client’s needs, challenges, market state, and user experience. It’s essential to define the named points to explore competitors, business needs, and end-users’ pain points.
The UX Research Process.
Limeup experts collect data about your company’s current state. competitors’ interfaces, and conduct usability tests, user interviews, etc.
Step 2: Creating a clickable prototype
Providing a mock-up is a vital part of the website redesign process, which represents the platform’s main features and visual part. Our experts create clickable prototypes for usability testing. Such a wireframe allows the test of the interface and features, navigation, etc.
Example of a clickable prototype.
Step 3: Usability testing
When it comes to the Limeup, we conduct from 3 to 5 one-hour usability tests to validate the concept of design and how it performs. The leading goal is to ensure that the provided functionality and visual part of the website suit your end-users’ expectations.
Quality components of usability.
In our practice, Limeup focuses on the website’s architecture and design elements to present customers with outstanding solutions.
Step 4: Prototype iteration
Discovering valuable insights about end-users through iterations, you can identify bugs and improve the usability of your website. Additionally, you will be able to reduce costs since you previously fixed issues or flaws and analyzed the feedback from users.
Prototype iteration process.
After conducting the prototype testing, you can improve the final result and continue with the next iteration and steps.
Step 5: User experience design
When redesigning a website, you have to create a robust user experience, thereby, you have to involve specialists according to your project’s complexity. When it comes to LImeup and our process, we create several designs, presenting clients with a variety of branding colors and elements to choose from.
Example of different designs.
Finalizing the design within the website redesign strategy, you can hand over the UI (User Interface) and use these elements for further use. Check out our top UX design agencies in London that will help you to reach your business goals.
Step 6: Development
It’s the final stage that stands for developing your brand new website using a robust tech stack. For example, Limeup programmers use a wide range of programming languages:
Backend: Java, Node.js, Golang, and Python.
Frontend: React.js, Vue.js.
Mobile: Swift, Kotlin, React Native.
Development process.
5 typical site redesign mistakes
Website redesign is aimed at presenting your business online, so it’s better to be aware of all the challenges and errors while rethinking your platform. So, let’s define the top 5 mistakes you can make in the redesigning of your website.
Typical site redesign mistakes.
1. Not setting a vision of your re-platforming
Having clear goals is evident and essential as the process of redesigning is complex and multi-level. According to the goals you set, such as better SEO ranking or driving more leads, you will choose the tools and build a team of tech specialists.
Not identifying your needs and the final result you would like to achieve means you will spend money and resources on unpredictable projects. Moreover, you may think that there are too many goals and you need a complex redesign. Still, it’s better to set small goals that represent a holistic view of your project.
2. Avoiding design responsiveness
As we have mentioned before, there are more and more mobile users, so you have to provide a mobile-first approach when rethinking your platform. Ignoring responsive design, you will only lose a large amount of users.
Simultaneously, you have to consider the navigation menus, content you have created, URLs, and page load time, and optimize your layouts, plug-ins, images, and media.
3. Not conducting error analysis
Even if you are rethinking your website from scratch, study previous mistakes and errors that you received to avoid them in the future. For example, you may use various metrics, from the number of visitors who left your website in less than 3 seconds to more advanced tools.
Also, you have to take into account your strong sides; perhaps your brand colors work well, or you have a seamless and easy-to-follow navigation. These essential points are required for a website redesign project plan.
4. Not performing various tests
Implementing new designs without pre-testing, you just throw your money away. You have to analyze the main metrics and learn more about your visitors, especially information about their location, how they interact with your old website, which pages are the most and the least popular, and the number of leads or people who subscribe to your newsletters.
After various tests, you will be able to prioritize pages to focus on and achieve your local goals. Moreover, you can ensure that the final website redesign examples suit you well and will meet the end-users’ expectations.
5. Ignoring SEO possibilities
SEO is also an essential part of web design services that allows you to have a better ranking in search engines and expand your online presence. According to the statistics, the first result in Google receives a CTR of 27.6%. Therefore, if you want to remain competitive and allow more people to view your website, taking into consideration SEO is vital.
Moreover, SEO-optimized content can help you with website redesign, as well as interlinking and backlinking.
How much does redesigning your website cost?
Reworking your website is a challenging task that requires money, time, and specialists. The final price will vary according to the project’s complexity, software architecture, and custom features you want to implement. On average, it may cost up to several thousand dollars, depending on the type of cooperation you choose as well.
For example, within the web design process, you may cooperate with agencies or hire freelancers, and the price for redesigning a website will be different. Or you can decide to work on your own if you have enough experience and expertise. Additionally, consider such points:
- Advanced tools for marketing, SEO, or other part of your website.
- 24/7 customer support within AI-powered chatbots.
- CRM system and other solutions.
- Templates or building from scratch.
- The size of the team.
- Project duration and complexity.
- The number of usability test participants involved.
According to our research, the minimum project price is $10,000, and it covers a prior consultation, various research, usability testing with the target audience, product prototype creation, UX design and iterations, and product development if required.
If you are wondering how to reduce the cost of this rethinking, you may use a website redesign template or hire web designers on freelance. However, this approach can’t guarantee full customization and fully reflect your brand.
How to build a website redesign strategy?
This task is challenging, and, as we mentioned before, you have to clearly understand your business needs and current website state and evaluate the features to implement. Since you have learned how to redesign a website, let’s focus on a strategy for the successful implementation of your brand-new platform.
First of all, start with why you need a new solution and what are your goals and end-users’ expectations. Simultaneously, you have to evaluate your target audience preferences, what they are looking for, how they would perceive your website, etc.
Secondly, your process has to be holistic and meticulous, representing your vision of the future product. It’s essential to ensure that the launching site is fully functional and has the required features and content.
Thirdly, create a user interface and build a robust user experience; perhaps it’s the most vital part of your journey since your website is aimed at end-users, their pain points, and requirements.
And fourthly, focus on the content. Yes, it may seem optional, but it has a huge SEO impact, which, in turn, affects your search engine ranking. Provide only the required information and prepare texts that are easy to follow. Users have to quickly follow the main idea of your brand from the very first page, and content also impacts how convincing you are within your site.
Redesign strategy allows you to be aware of various challenges that may appear since the rethinking process is a complex task with many vulnerabilities. Prepare properly, conduct your research, and set goals to improve your website and make the redesign process seamless.
Sum up on website redesign
Considering site redesign, we can definitely say that it’s a challenging and complex process that requires your time and effort. You have to evaluate your needs and current site to build a strong plan for website redesign. Hopefully, our article made it more clearly for you.
We have considered the main steps in how-to-guide and what mistakes to avoid when planning a platform rethinking. If you want to facilitate the process and receive a full-fledged solution, consider to contact Limeup.
Our team consists of 40+ highly experienced tech specialists who can implement solutions of any complexity. They have practical experience in different industries, such as healthcare, real estate, crypto, edtech, fintech, and igaming, to name a few. We have already helped numerous startups and established companies.
Let’s team up for a website redesign and create a website that will drive more leads and build a strong online presence for your business!