All businesses and all websites go through a redesign at one point or another. There is never a perfect time to redesign or a perfect time to launch the redesign when you have it, but it is an important part of all websites and businesses. We have recently worked with the design team at Keren’s Nursery, who are an Ofsted Outstanding rated nursery in London, with 3 branches.
With a new site and design and a website that performs better than ever, there are a number of lessons to be learnt from a redesign.
Think About Your Audience
It may sound obvious but it is something often overlooked. Every website and business will have a different audience. Even for websites in the same industry, it is likely their key audience and clientele will be slightly different from that of their competitors. Thus, it is crucial to understand what your audience want when it comes to things like:
- Imagery
- Colour schemes
- Site features
- Services offered
- Information presented
Website Performance
One of the most overlooked elements of any website is how it performs. For example, a slow website is much more likely to cause potential customers and clients to leave and not come back.
Therefore, think about the speed and performance upon interaction of your website. There are some technical and sometimes complicated things to think about here but there are also some simple things you can do to improve the overall speed, performance and day to day running of your website:
- Enable browser caching
- Make your website mobile friendly
- Avoid using large image and media files
- Try to avoid using JavaScript (JS)
- Use a search engine-friendly content management system (CMS)
What Are You Writing About?
Content research is a fundamental part of any website and marketing campaign. After all, you need to speak to your audience and customers in a way your competitors do not. Therefore, make sire to spend the time undertaking the necessary content research so that whatever you write on your website is relevant and of interest to your audience as well as any audience of your competitors. Also, make sure all your content is optimised for search engine optimisation (SEO). Bear in mind that SEO-optimised content does not need to have a whole bunch of keywords forced and stuffed into the content.
What Does Your Website Do?
This may seem obvious but is easy to forget. For example, if your website is selling physical items, it will be important that the checkout process is seamless and adding items to a basket should be fast and easy. In the case of a service, data capture and utilisation are likely to be very important. You will need to ensure that users who contact you and your company can be effectively filtered and leads followed up for a potential sale.
When it comes to the imagery and any visuals, these are very important however, make sure that they do not obstruct or get in the way of the core features of the website.