Planning a complete website redesign used to be a huge task. Small companies never expected it due to the enormity and complexity of the task. While any resource-poor organization might still find this a daunting challenge today, the prospect and steps of a website redesign are far less daunting today than they were several years ago. This is partly due to the wide range of tools available, which make the process smoother and faster. How to plan a website revamp? See in this post the steps to launch the redesign of your website
How to Plan a Website Revamp
The reason that organizations are undertaking site revamps has also changed over the past few years. Whereas, just a few years ago, all the talk about website improvements was on optimizing a website for mobile users. All website owners do this, and the new focus of optimization is on user experience on your website.
Below are some points you might want to consider if you are thinking about how to plan your website revamp. So that you end up with one that is in line with the most important needs of today’s user. Follow these steps to launch a good website redesign.
The Importance of Web Hosting
Choosing the right web host can be crucial for your business. If you’re doing a complete overhaul, it might be time to consider whether your current web host meets your needs. For example, if you experienced downtime with your current web host, that likely resulted in lost revenue. If your site is down multiple times, this will also affect your search ranking.
Above is the screenshot of our website TTFB using WebPageTest. The result is 415ms which is very good.
Speed is another crucial area that your web host should provide for you. If your site is experiencing slow loading of content and images, chances are you are missing out on many visitors. Internet surfers are notorious for abandoning sites that don’t load instantly to provide what they’re looking for.
Security is another issue of critical concern for your organization because small businesses are under greater attack today. Cybercriminals turn their attention to the lucrative prospects of hacking small businesses in large numbers. Therefore, finding the best web hosting is something you can’t ignore if you are serious about revamp your website.
Lastly, suppose you haven’t been getting the kind of customer service and technical support you feel entitled to as a client. In that case, that’s something else you should consider when considering the possibility of engaging a new host for your website.
Google Has Established Mobile Speed As Its Benchmark
Because of the prevalence of mobile access to the Internet and the sheer number of mobile shoppers and surfers, Google has made mobile speed its benchmark for loading speed. However, the search engine giant has also conducted extensive research. She found that most mobile sites today do not meet user expectations for loading speed.
Google found that the average user would abandon a website if it didn’t fully load on their mobile device within three seconds. But the average mobile site took a whopping 22 seconds to load! This fact makes it easy to understand why users quickly leave one place in favor of another, which loads faster.
The bottom line of Google’s research was that as load times increased from one second to ten seconds, the abandonment rate rose by 123%.
The bottom line is that your website needs to be mobile-friendly – and load quickly on mobile devices. Otherwise, you will likely lose most of your potential customers.
What Your Website Needs To Be GDPR-Compliant
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was adopted by the European Union in 2016 and entered into force in May 2018. This was to introduce certain specific obligations for data controllers and data processors, both inside and outside the EU. Indeed, it obliges organizations that manage large volumes of personal data to ensure compliance with the regulation, under penalty of being subject to heavy fines.
One of the main points of the regulation involves ensuring that individuals give their explicit consent. This is so that your private data will be used for any purpose. Another is the right of individuals to request information about all data held about them. A third aspect would be a user’s right to have their data deleted from an organization’s database.
A few other minor points are also in the GDPR, but these are the main ones. If an individual feels that his/her rights were violated under the regulation, they would have the option of claiming the offending organization. Suppose your website holds a large amount of data on individuals, particularly financial organizations, and some of your clients are based in Europe. If so, this is an important consideration you need to be aware of in your website revamp plan.
Chrome Browser Has Labeled Non-SSL Sites As Insecure
In early 2017, Chrome browser started labeling all non-SSL websites as ‘not secure.’ Which means that all transactions carried out between that website and other parties were subject to hacking by cybercriminals.
Secure socket layer (SSL) technology has all data encrypted, which is exchanged between a website and users of that site to ensure privacy. Hackers cannot intercept data for their own personal gain.
Suppose your website has not moved over to SSL to provide this level of security for your users. In that case, you could lose out on business, especially if your competitors offer an SSL environment to users.
You can overcome this issue by installing an SSL certificate on your website. If you have budget constraints, you can opt for the Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate. It’s a free digital certificate you can install on your website to provide visitors with a safe and trusted environment.
Incorporate Rich Media Content Into Your Website Revamp
In the past five years, it has become much easier for organizations to include media-rich content on their websites, especially with the costs of video productions being drastically reduced.
If you haven’t already included videos and images, your site redesign plan would be a great time to incorporate them. Numerous statistics point to the value of including videos and images in your website content because these are the forms of content that most engage users.
If you’re trying to reach a target audience and want them to be engaged enough to spend some time on your website, you need to have images and video as a major component of your site content.
In fact, if your revamp has to be somewhat limited because of funding, this may be the most important upgrade you can make to your website. You should also consider incorporating mobile-friendly websites. Taia, like YouTube, on your website to improve engagement with virtually no effort on your part.
Analyze Heat Maps
Heat-mapping technology can be extremely useful for a site, and in your revamp, you should give this some major consideration. When you have heat mapping technology installed on your website, you can identify where users spend most of their time. Such as what content they read or view and what content they ignore.
Knowing this information can be invaluable in preparing a strategy. Which will engage users and eventually encourage them to take some desired action.
Digital heatmaps let you know if any of your images or content is boring. If navigation is confusing your site visitors if some links on your site are irrelevant, and if your calls-to-action are weak and underperforming.
This analytics tool can go a long way toward telling you exactly what’s wrong with your site and what you should do to address any shortcomings. Many organizations use heat mapping technology to help them identify how and when they need a website revamp.
Concluding About Website Revamp
Other considerations should be made when thinking through the steps launch to redesign your website. Still, suppose you pay attention to the points described above. In that case, you should end up with a website that provides an engaging user experience and will pay dividends for your organization for several years. We hope this article on how to plan your website revamp has been helpful!
