If a website redesign is in your future or you’re thinking about revamping your current website, this checklist will help pull together all of the important information to maximize your budget and have a website that is optimized to meet your goals.
Decide Between a Full Website Redesign or Website Update and Optimization
REASONS FOR A REDESIGN
- Your website hasn’t received a full redesign in 2-or-more years
- You’re using outdated or limiting technology and/or coding standards
- Your design needs a full overhaul
- Navigation & content need to be revamped
Reasons to Optimize
- Your website was recently redesigned
- Your website isn’t performing at the level you’d like
- The overall design is up to modern standard
Determine your Timeframe and Budget
What is your Timeframe? What is your Budget?
Your timeframe and budget may dictate between a complete redesign and a optimization.
Identify Benchmarks from your Current Website
Determine what is working on your current website: What do you like? What do you want to stay the same?
● Determine what is not working on your current website: Where are the problem areas? Have you gotten any negative feedback?
● Look at your analytics tools to get a baseline of the following statistics: Visits, Time on Site, Bounce Rate, Most Visited Pages, & Page Views.
Use the Free Analytics Tool: Google Analytics
● Keywords: Which keywords are you currently getting impressions for?
Use this Free Keywords Tool: Google Webmaster Tools
● Form submissions: How many form submissions are you currently receiving?
Now that you know a little bit about what you need and what you want, get to work on the content of your website.
Develop Personas
❏ Have you developed your personas? Establish details about your target
audience and personas to ensure your marketing efforts hit your target by
completing this Persona Toolkit.
Gather Your Company Branding
❏ Do you have your logo handy?
❏ Are you confident with your branding/style guidelines?
Build Website Navigation
A typical website includes the following pages: Home | About | Services/Products | Blog | Contact
● Review all the pages of your website and determine:
Are there any pages you’d like to add?
Are there any pages you’d like to remove?
Which pages are good, but could use some updating?
❏ Complete a URL mapping worksheet
❏ Complete a website navigation worksheet
Create Content
● Target Keywords
Do some keyword research and list which keywords or phrases you want to focus on.
● What is your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)?
Your USP is what sets you apart from everyone else. Write it down!
This is the first thing people see when coming to your website. It should include:
❏ The need/pain that the visitor has
❏ Why you’re uniquely qualified to solve their problem
❏ How you can solve their problem
❏ What action they should take next
● Do you have things that can show trustworthiness and authority?
❏ Certifications
❏ Awards
❏ Press
❏ Testimonials
❏ Customer reviews
❏ Case studies
Callouts & User Experience
● What action would you like the user to take?
❏ Call your Office
❏ Fill out out a contact form
❏ Sign up for an account
❏ Other
These will be your calls-to-action. There may be 2-4 things that are called out or promoted throughout the site. Each page should have a specific purpose and specific action that you want to the user to take.
Tools & Assets & Inbound Marketing Strategy
These strategies will draw people to your website:
● Have you defined which subjects you are the expert? Y/N
● Will you have a blog? Y/N
● Will you have a newsletter signup? Y/N
● Will you have a social media strategy? Y/N
● Will you create marketing offers and lead magnets? Y/N
❏ eBooks
❏ Toolkits
❏ Checklist
❏ Webinars
❏ Other
Determine the Goals for your Website
● As part of your sales and marketing goals, establish some specific goals for your website. Examples are: Number of Leads, Products Sold, Website Sales, Website Traffic, Form Submissions, Lead Conversions,
Determine the Technical Details
● Domain
What is the login/access to your current website domain?
● Hosting
Where is your current site hosted?
Where will your new site be hosted?
This may be based on: the content management system, the development company, your budget, among other details.
● SSL
❏ Have you switched your website from HTTP to HTTPS?
Google Chrome is rolling out updates for all websites that aren’t HTTPS to mark the page as “Not Secure”.
● Content Management System
❏ Have you received training for your content management system?
A content management system is how you’ll make updates to your website and manage your digital content. A few examples are: Hubspot, WordPress, or eCMS.
Ideas For Your New or Optimized Website
Now that you have a good understanding of what content your website needs to have, it’s time to start the design. Think about design and layout, color scheme, photography vs. graphics, messaging, and event different tools and marketing assets different websites have. Here are a few guidelines for determining what your site will look like:
● Find 3-5 examples of website you like:
a. Some from your industry
b. Some outside of your industry
c. It could be the whole site or parts
● Find 3-5 examples of website you don’t like:
a. This helps your Web Designer know what to stay away from unless there
is a compelling reason not to
● Look at your competitor’s websites:
a. They may be doing some things well
b. See what they aren’t doing as well at and how your website can do better
● Find marketing assets you like:
a. Tools or resources that your visitors want and would provide info for
b. Brainstorm a wishlist of potential ideas and prioritize from there
Website redesign conveys a great deal of technical intrepidity. You need to be on top of evolving trends, and revamp your website in a way that will transpose into weighable outcomes for your business.
There are many advantages to working with a professional website designer. A good professional website designer should propose a wide variety of services scalable to your needs. If you want your business to reach new heights, contact us for the professional website redesign.
