Introduction

Just like the brick-and-mortar stores, digital places of business also need occasional improvement. There are numerous reasons why you might decide to upgrade your website, your business scales, technology changes, or you simply want to refresh your online presence. Whatever reason drives your endeavor, numerous nuances might slip your attention and cause malfunctions or reduce the quality of your website.

In this article, we’ll go through some of the most important aspects of the website redesign process so that, when the time comes, you can make the necessary changes without any concerns.

Perform complete analysis

In order to improve your website, you should first have a clear image of which parts need to be improved. Your best chance of reaching an informed decision is looking at Google Analytics data. The information that this tool has to offer can help you figure out performance issues, what types of content your audience appreciates, or which calls to action lack engagement.

Once you perform a thorough inspection of your website, you can focus your attention on the development process.

Consider the latest trends in web design technology

If you wish to provide a world-class user experience, you need to make sure visitors could reach you through a wide array of devices and internet browsers. The advent of HTML5, WebAssembly, and similar open standards made Adobe give up on Flash Player because browser developers are discarding all heavyweight plugins and replacing them with lighter solutions such as the above-mentioned open standards. 

Therefore, if you’re planning on adding new or reshaping the old content, make sure you don’t expect it to run on Flash Player because in the future this type of content will no longer be available on Chrome, Mozilla, and numerous other internet browsers. The same goes with the programming language you decide to use for back-end development and plugins.

Manage your URLs

SEO includes a series of techniques, one of those is grouping your content into categories so Google and other search engines can crawl through your website faster. This usually means your existing content will now have a new URL. Changing the location of individual pages to fit your digitalized marketing efforts means that old links that you have published, or your consumers have bookmarked, will no longer be valid. 

To avoid loss of traffic due to a missing link, establish a 301 redirect for pages with new addresses. You could use Google Analytics and set up a 404-event tracking so whenever someone tries to reach a page you moved you can redirect that link and keep your consumers happy.

Be mindful of website performance

The fact that you’ve decided to improve your website is a clear sign that you care about the user experience and overall quality of your service. However, adding new content, changing the graphics, and installing new functionalities make your website “heavier”. The additional weight reduces performance, mainly by increasing the time it takes to load a page. 

By current standards, a two-second increase in load speed can rise your website bounce rate by more than 30 percent. Therefore, instead of an improvement, your hard work could lead to a loss of audience and consequently a drop in revenue.

Keep your website structure in line with your traffic requirements and hardware configuration. If necessary, upscale your hosting package; otherwise, introduce only the most indispensable additions to avoid performance disruptions. Also, use a responsive design approach to maintain a high level of quality on both mobile and desktop devices.

Conclusion

Redesigning your website gives you the chance to scale your business and bring new customers under your banner. These pieces of advice are here to help you on this path, but you should never lose your brand identity in the process. Also, pay attention to what your audience expects of you, their insight can be of great value as well. 

Author Bio:

Rosa Hemming is a blogger and professional college essay papers writing expert from the United States. Rosa is engaged with several professional writing services. Her blog consists of lists of the best films divided by genre and for different moods. Find her on Twitter.