Ideas for evaluating, improving
and updating your website
This website redesign guide is for:
Companies and individuals who are redesigning their own websites
(print this out and fill in the form with a group).
Companies outsourcing the redesign of their website (give the completed
form to the company doing your redesign).
Website developers (this will help them ask their clients the right
questions).
INTRODUCTION
It is obvious that websites need continuous improvement. Just browse
around for a few minutes and discover the sites that are looking old and
obsolete. But there are many other reasons to redesign your site. Some
of them are not obvious but are at the core of the site. This website
redesign guide is really for anyone involved with websites. It will help
you get the deep meaning of the site as well as more practical issues.
This guide will help you redesign a website according to your audience's
needs and changing perceptions. It is no longer good enough to have a
static website. It must capture their attention, have new information,
and engage the visitor or 'adios' they are off to your competitors site.
WEBSITE REDESIGN CHECKLIST
All websites should be in a process of being redesigned or renovated.
This guide will give you some simple steps or a checklist to redesigning
your website. We also have four other website redesign tools.
EVALUATE
EXISTING SITE What are the success and failures of your existing site? Gather a
few people to get an honest evaluation of your existing site. Write three
successes and three failures. Then write down your dreams and goals for
the new site.
BRAINSTORMING
What new and fresh ideas are missing? Brainstorm with a team of people
to get fresh ideas. Write down five ideas that came from the brainstorming.
WHY
PEOPLE NOW VISIT Why are people visiting your site? Generally they are coming for information
or are in need of your company's product or service but there can be many
other reasons. List three reasons.
DOES
IT GRAB ATTENTION? Do you think visitors remember your site? Does it have something that
gets attention and is memorable? If he/she does not bookmark your site
what will get them back? You should give your visitor something to remember
so that he can find his way back to your site. Write one thing that will
be remembered about your site.
RESEARCH
COMPETITORS What can I learn from my competitors? Get ideas about the latest web
design, technology and communication concepts by looking analytically
at competitor sites. While you are there notice some of the keywords they
are using to get the attention of people coming to search engines.
TARGET
AUDIENCE Who is the target audience? Decide whom you want to target with the
site. Who is your customer or audience? Try and get into their shoes and
think like they think. What are their needs or points of interest? How
can they be served? List the top three categories of people. Write three
one sentence descriptions of different people in your target audience.
Then write a few words that might interest these people and cause them
to respond to your site.
THEME
AND 'LOOK AND FEEL' What is the mood or emotion that you want to communicate? Decide on
the overall theme and "look and feel" of the site. For example: humor,
professional, academic, family, technical, etc. Write three adjectives
to describe the way you want your site to feel.
CONTENT
This is probably why most people come to your site. They come to read
your content. It should be clear and well written. A very high percentage
of websites are providing poorly written content. The first generation
of websites were written by the guy who knew HTML but not much about graphic
design and writing. Now people realize that it takes a team effort to
make a quality web page. Part of the team should be a good writer. Redesigning
requires having several outsiders read your content to see if it is clear,
up-to-date, accurate and communicates what it is supposed to. Then rewrite
the content. Another tip is to provide more than just your company information
but provide articles that attract people to the site.
TRUST
AND CREDIBILITY What will make your visitor believe you? Imagine going into an automobile
repair shop or Doctors office. What is it that gives you a sense of trust
that your car or body will be repaired correctly? A quality site that
does what it says it is going to do will help. Also well-written content
adds credibility. Perhaps you can guarantee your products. Testimonies
by reputable people or companies are perhaps the best way to establish
creditability. A list of previous customers is helpful. List a person,
company or product that can be associated with your site to add trust
and credibility.
KEEP
SEARCH ENGINES IN MIND How do I redesign my site and write my text with the search engines
in mind? Decide on keywords. This is a new concept that really only applies
to redesigning or developing websites. It may not even apply to all websites,
but to those who are depending on search engines this is an important
point. The concept is to get good rankings on search engines with different
keywords. Since many pages on your site can be indexed with a search engine
this becomes an important strategy in attracting visitors.
ANALYZE
VISITOR KEYWORDS Look at your site statistics and see if the keywords entered by your
visitors are matching the three target audiences you just listed. If not,
then the redesigning needs to help move the site content, design, and
promotion towards the target audience. You may be fooled to think that
you are getting a high number of visitors but many of them may not be
the kind of visitors that are important to your company or organization.
ANALYZE
POPULARITY OF PAGES Look at your site statistics and carefully examine the popularity
of the pages. You may need to redesign the site so that the pages that
you want visited are the most popular. There will always be pages at the
bottom of the list but your goal should be to make sure that the important
pages are not at the bottom. Changing keywords etc. can boost some of
these pages.
ANALYZE
VISITORS' ACTIONS Are your visitors coming back and are they spending time at your site?
If your visitors are not returning or they are only spending a few seconds
at your site then something is wrong. A good site statistics program or
service will help you know what your visitors are doing.
NAVIGATION
Can the visitor find what is needed quickly and easily? As a first generation
site grows it often outgrows its navigation. A good redesign will help.
The new design needs careful thought so that the visitor will not get
lost or be more than two clicks away from what he/she needs. There are
many factors to consider. Here are a few examples. It is obvious that
buttons are clickable? What links should always be available to the user?
Is the information divided into logical categories and prioritized? Is
old content archived and easy to find?
PERSONAL
INTEREST
Do you have a place where visitors can find out what is behind the scenes?
Some people may want to know who is behind this website. What does their
office look like? Revealing this can help build trust and credibility
Consider posting a company newsletter or short biographies about employees.
FRESH
NEWS Do your visitors feel they are visiting an active site? Sitting in
a doctor's waiting room with old newspapers might make you wonder about
the competence of the doctor. In the same way, visiting a site that was
last updated in 1996 is a sure way to lose visitor trust. When redesigning
the website build in ways to keep it fresh, but keep in mind that publishing
dates can work against you. Don't create too much extra work for yourself
unless you are a workaholic.
PRODUCT
AND SERVICE INFORMATION Are you making it easy for your customers to do business with you?
Can they find what they need quickly? Can they respond easily? Your job
in redesigning a website is to make things easy for visitors and customers.
Carefully think through what a customer needs to do to get what he needs.
Is it clear and simple? Eliminate unnecessary steps.
INFORMATION
Are you adding value to your visitor? To keep your visitors returning
it is important to think of how you can serve him rather than what can
my company get from him. This is one of the major shifts in thinking on
the Internet. A printed brochure transferred to the Internet might be
OK but serving your customer/visitor is better.
INTERACTION
Can your visitors exchange information with you? If you sell a product
can the customer find out how the order is progressing? Can he/she easily
get a question answered? This type of interaction is making life easier
for everyone.
COLLABORATION
Can your visitors learn from each other? Collaboration is one of the
most important advantages being discovered on the Internet. It is very
common for visitors to a site to have as much or more knowledge on the
subject than the experts behind the site. Collaboration between visitors
can add a lot of value to your visitor's experience. Discussion forums
all this exchange of information. If this information is archived it can
be a good pool of information for future visitors.
INTERNATIONAL
AUDIENCE If all or part of your audience is global then you need to consider
a few things. First, many places don't have fast Internet access so the
site needs to have fewer graphic and other slow loading items. Second,
monitor sizes in some countries average 14"-15". The design should take
this into consideration. Finally, many phrases and other culture things
may not make sense, for example the phrase "ball park" estimate only makes
sense to an American.
SPEED What needs to be compromised for the sake of speed? Site speed and
server speed is the major bottleneck on the Internet. Only so much information
can travel through a small phone line. This is what limits the size of
pictures, amount of sound, and many other aspects of the Internet. In
redesigning a site this is an all-pervading thought. It is the rare exception
when the visitor will wait for a site to load. Consider the size of every
piece of the site and determine if it can be made smaller or eliminated.
GRAPHICS
AND ANIMATION Are the graphics able to load fast? Do the graphics communicate a
concept? A website redesign should involve an evaluation and possible
redevelopment of graphics and photos. The present graphics may be unnecessary
or may be unclear or too large. In any case each one should be reconsidered.
New software makes it possible to make better graphics that are smaller
and load faster.
COMPONENTS Is the website taking advantage of components like, a discussion forum,
poll, survey, guestbook, chat and more? These concepts behind and reasons
for using these components are well covered in other points in this website
redesign guide but it us helpful to think about how they can be used to
improve your website.
MAKE
IT EASY FOR CUSTOMERS TO DO BUSINESS WITH YOU Do know what your customer is thinking? When redesigning a website
it would be helpful to know as much as possible about how your customer
is responding to your site. Is he/she able to get all the information
needed to make an informed decision? Are there too many steps involved
in ordering or getting information? What obstacles are in the way?
HIRE
THE RIGHT PEOPLE TO REDESIGN YOUR WEBSITE Will you select a team with the right mix of experience and talent?
From the looks of the websites of many of the companies offering their
design and development services it appears that many are one person operations.
Either they are tech-gurus and lack the aesthetic abilities or they are
artistic types that lack the technical know how to build a complex site.
Building or redesign a website is best done with a team. A team can synergize
their abilities and create a much better site. Your website is your signature.
It is often the only way for people to evaluate who you are. Your profits
depend on the quality of your site. Don't regret a poor decision in choosing
who redesigns your website.
