Website Redesign 101 - Rapidan Strategies€¦ · Website Redesign 101 7 Easy Ways to Make Your...

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STEP 1 – DETERMINE WHETHER WEBSITE REDESIGN IS RIGHT FOR YOU

The first step in determining whether website redesign is right for you is to determine what you want to accomplish. Successful website design projects are based around achieving business goals. Here are some examples of good and bad reasons to redesign a website:

Good Reasons for Redesign Bad Reasons for Redesign “We want to get found by more

prospects” “We have a new corporate look

and feel” “We want to convert more

prospects to leads and eventually, to customers”

“The CEO wants to do it”

“We want to improve branding” –

only a good reason if oriented around one of the previous

reasons

“It’s been twelve months since

our last redesign”

The excitement you will have from a complete renovation of your website will be short lived. Once you have visited your site repeatedly, the excitement of a new website will turn into boredom. Complete website renovation is even worse for users - users are accustomed to the constancy of old website.

Hubspot, Webinar Redesign Strategy, 2010

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KEY TAKEAWAYS Misguided reasons for redesigning your website are driven by the thought that the freshness and “wow factor” of a new website will increase excitement over your brand. The main motivations behind website renovations should be to improve the performance of your website. A beautiful website, although intriguing and aesthetically pleasing, is secondary to a functional traffic and lead generating website.

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STEP 2 – ENSURE THAT YOUR WEBSITE ASSETS ARE PROTECTED

Website assets such as content, inbound links, keyword rankings, and conversion tools are critical to a strong web presence. To preserve your web presence, you must keep track these assets to insure that they are all transferred in the redesign process.

WEBSITE ASSET CHECKLIST

1. Determine how many web pages you have

2. Figure out which pages are most popular

3. Determine how many inbound links you have

4. Establish where these links are coming from

5. Establish which interior pages have inbound links

6. Determine which links are most powerful

7. Determine which keywords you rank for

8. Figure out which keywords are most effective

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KEY TAKEAWAYS If you do not fully understand the importance and practice of proper SEO, doing a web design can be more damaging than helpful. If you do not feel comfortable around SEO work, it may be best to hire a specialist to perform the redesign so all the hard work you have put into making a web presence does not disappear. It may also be time to contact a professional to set you up with a system that can track these metrics if you don’t already have a system in place.

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STEP 3 – FORMATTING YOUR HOMEPAGE

Many business owners want an interactive and flashy homepage that entices visitors. It is important to establish that fundamentals need to be addressed first. The first objective of your homepage should be usability and simplicity. Keep in mind that:

75% of Internet users never scroll past the first page of search results.i

76% of consumers want a website that makes it easy to find what they want.ii

HOMEPAGE BEST PRACTICES

Highlight your blog on your homepage Social networking links are a must on your homepage Set up a permanent redirect to your new homepage from any deleted

pages from your old website Limit the amount of choices a consumer must make

o If you have 25 services, group them under 4 broad categories

Source: HubSpot, the Science of Website Redesign, June 2011

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KEY TAKEAWAYS Your homepage is the face of your services or products. You only get one chance to impress your visitors, so make sure you carefully place the essentials you want them to know on your homepage. It should also act as a launching platform to places where they can interact with you in the future (i.e. blog, social media, etc.)

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STEP 4 – FOCUS ON CONTINUOUS ORIGINAL CONTENT THAT ATTRACTS AND CONVERTS It is important to understand that original content that is refreshed frequently is what generates web traffic and improved search engine rankings. Content creation is a continuous process – outsourcing content creation to a professional is often the best approach for small and mid-sized businesses.

HubSpot, 100 Awesome Marketing Stats, Charts and Graphs for You, 2011

MATCH CONTENT CREATION TO STAGES IN THE BUYING PROCESS

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KEY TAKEAWAYS Original content is your website’s messenger; it will inform your prospects on what you do, and how passionately you do it. With a vast array of formats to create content on, you should always be continuously contributing original content to keep your prospects engaged and constantly interacting with your website.

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STEP 5 – FORMATTING YOUR LANDING PAGES Landing pages are the gateways through which website visitors pass to become leads. On a landing page, a website visitor completes a form typically including their names, e-mail addresses and company affiliation in order to download a content offer like and eBook or whitepaper. Here is what a landing page looks like:

On your landing pages, keep your offer simple and concise – a user should be able to understand the offer within 5 seconds. Make sure and keep your form above the fold (don’t make the user scroll to complete the form.) Lastly, experiment with your landing pages – try different formats, colors and graphics. Measure the results to see which pages work best. Work with an inbound marketing professional to design compelling landing pages.

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KEY TAKEAWAYS Landing pages are where the magic happens; they are the gateway to your conversion offers that create engaged and interested leads. Make sure you can grab their attention with an interesting offer, but also coherently explain what you are offering through the landing page!

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STEP 6 – CONDUCT CONVERSION EXPERIMENTS

Your website should be constantly evolving – you should be measuring the success of landing pages and content offers with marketing automation software like HubSpot. Content offers like eBooks and whitepapers should be created with the purpose of educating your prospects and nurturing them through the buying process. If your landing pages and content offers aren’t reaching their full potential, consider:

Attaching links to the landing pages and sending them to your opt-in e-mail list

Conducting A/B experiments with your landing pages and calls-to-action

Have pay-per-click ads that go to your landing pages Use them as a follow-up next step after a trade show or event

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KEY TAKEAWAYS Website design is not a one and done deal. Your web pages should evolve and improve over time. This is especially important for your landing pages since they help convert your faceless website visitors into opportunities that you have collected vital information about.

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STEP 7 – REVIEW METRICS ON VISITORS AND LEADS

If you can’t measure it, it probably isn’t worth doing! This is particularly true with marketing through your website. A website redesign is a process of ongoing improvement and the process is never over. Make sure you have the proper tools and people in place to measure and improve your marketing. At the end of the day, it’s fairly straightforward: measure your efforts and do more of what works and less of what doesn’t. In reviewing metrics:

Avoid “paralysis by analysis.” Do not concern yourself with metrics that track the technical

performance of your website. Focus on these three metrics:

o Visitors. How many people are coming to my website? Where are they coming from?

o Leads. How many visitors converted to leads? What did they convert on?

o Sales. How many leads converted to sales?

These metrics will help you determine what parts of your website need revision.

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KEY TAKEAWAYS Metrics are pivotal for pinpointing the exact pain points of your website. By doing small, but constant adjustments to your website, you will be able to maximize the utility of your website so it becomes a platform for generating visitors, leads, and ultimately, sales.

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PUTTING IT ALL IN PLACE

When considering a website redesign, it is essential to have a well-defined purpose for the redesign. That purpose should be related to creating revenue for most organizations. If you have a beautiful website that doesn’t help generate revenue, what’s the point? You should hire a competent professional familiar with all aspects of the revenue generation process to ensure that goals are met. To review, here are the seven steps to a successful website redesign:

Start with defining your website redesign goals. o Remember that most companies don’t need a new website, but

rather need better tools on their existing site. Protect your assets during the design process so you do not damage

your website presence. Make a great first impression by focusing on the functionality of your

homepage. Creative and original content is the most powerful way of attracting

and retaining website visitors. Design compelling landing pages so visitors will be more willing to

give away their contact information for your content offerings. Make constant adjustments to landing pages by experimenting with

their layout and formatting. Set up a system to measure the metrics of your website so you can

reproduce successful campaigns, and scrap failing ones.

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Redesign projects can be laborious, so most companies are better suited at trying to get more out of what they already have. Inbound marketing tactics such as SEO, blogging, and social media are easy to include in your existing site, and are twice as effective as traditional web redesign elements. You should strive to make small, but constant and continuous improvements to each element of your current website so your website becomes a powerful traffic-generating machine.

i MARKETSHARE.HITSLINK.COM, OCTOBER 2010 ii Hubspot, THE SCIENCE OF WEBSITE REDESIGN, JUNE 2011