How to Prepare Your Website Redesign ?
Preparing for a website redesign is a complex task that requires meticulous planning and a well-defined strategy. A redesign should go beyond a simple graphical and technical overhaul. It’s the perfect time to realign the site with business objectives, optimize user experience, and ensure the site operates optimally for both users and search engines. This is where an audit phase comes into play to prepare for a website redesign.
One of the first critical steps is conducting a comprehensive audit of your current site. This audit should rely on both qualitative and quantitative data, gathered using various measurement tools. Qualitative data, such as user feedback and usability test results, provides deep insights into visitor expectations and behaviors. Quantitative data, obtained through Google Analytics, conversion tracking tools, and SEO performance reports, helps measure and analyze the site’s current performance.
Aligning your website redesign with your digital strategy ensures that every change made directly contributes to your goals. Whether you’re looking to increase conversions, improve user engagement, or strengthen your online presence, preparing for a website redesign must align with your strategy. Your website should become an effective tool that faithfully reflects your company’s values and mission while meeting user expectations.
Thus, careful preparation and a thorough audit form the foundation of a successful website redesign. By following these steps, you can create a high-performing website aligned with your goals and offering an optimal user experience.
Understanding Methodology To Prepare For a Website Redesign
To properly prepare for a redesign, it’s essential to set a precise methodology. Indeed, adhering to a methodology will be far more effective in addressing your challenges and objectives. In the context of a redesign, an approach based solely on SEO would not be effective enough. Therefore, it’s important to combine disciplines such as SEO, data, UX, and even UI Design.
Today, two methodologies address this:
– CRO for Conversion Rate Optimization
– SXO for Search Experience Optimization
These two methodologies are both different and complementary as they rely on common principles. One of the strongest principles is the rationalization of communication efforts for greater impact. In essence, the goal is to integrate an eco-design approach by recycling or consolidating content to meet SEO objectives. Now, let’s briefly explore what CRO and SXO are and their benefits.
CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization)
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is a methodology aimed at increasing the percentage of website visitors who perform a desired action, such as filling out a form, signing up for a newsletter, or making a purchase. CRO is based on analyzing user behavior and experimentation to continually improve conversion rates. The key steps of CRO include:
– Data Analysis: Using analytical tools to identify weak points in the user journey. This may include examining click-through rates, bounce rates, and time spent on each page.
– Hypotheses and A/B Testing: Formulating hypotheses to address identified issues and testing these hypotheses through A/B tests. For example, testing different versions of a call-to-action to see which one generates the most conversions.
– Continuous Optimization: Implementing winning changes and continuously iterating to improve conversions. This includes regular analysis of results and adjusting strategies accordingly.
The benefits of CRO are numerous:
– Increased Revenue: By improving conversion rates, you directly increase revenue without necessarily increasing traffic.
– Better Understanding of Users: Continuous user data analysis helps you better understand their behaviors and preferences.
– Improved User Experience: Testing and optimizations contribute to creating a smoother and more satisfying user experience.
SXO (Search Experience Optimization)
Search Experience Optimization (SXO) combines the principles of SEO and UX to offer an optimal user experience while improving search engine visibility. SXO focuses not only on keyword ranking but also on user satisfaction once they arrive on the site. The key elements of SXO include:
– User-Oriented Keyword Research: Identifying keywords that not only attract traffic but also match user intentions and needs. For example, targeting long-tail keywords that answer specific user questions.
– User Experience Optimization: Ensuring the site is intuitive, fast, and mobile-friendly. This includes optimizing navigation, loading times, and information architecture.
– Quality Content: Producing content that answers user questions and provides real added value. This includes blog articles, videos, infographics, and other engaging content formats.
The benefits of SXO are also significant:
– Better User Satisfaction: By optimizing the user experience, you increase user satisfaction and loyalty.
– Improved SEO: A better user experience can improve SEO metrics such as time on site and bounce rate, leading to better search engine rankings.
– Increased Conversions: A well-optimized site for users is more likely to convert visitors into customers.
Relying on UX Research
Relying on UX research may seem like an additional excessive cost, but it is essential for high-volume sites. As mentioned earlier, relying on data is crucial, and UX research is a key lever.
UX research is the process of collecting and analyzing data about users to understand their needs, behaviors, motivations, and pain points. The goal is to improve website design by making the user experience more intuitive, efficient, and satisfying. The most common methods are:
– User Interviews: In-depth discussions with users to gain qualitative insights. This helps understand users’ motivations, expectations, and frustrations.
– User Journey Analysis: Studying the paths users take on the site to identify pain points and improvement opportunities.
– Usability Testing: Observing users interacting with the site to identify ergonomics and user experience issues.
The benefits of UX research are manifold:
– Deep Understanding of Users: UX research provides detailed insights into user behaviors and expectations, enabling the creation of more tailored solutions.
– Improved User Experience: By identifying and resolving ergonomic issues, you can enhance the user experience and increase satisfaction.
– Risk Reduction: By testing and validating concepts before implementation, you reduce the risks of costly errors.
– More precisely aligning business and marketing objectives with user habits.
Creating New User Journeys And Marketing Conversion Paths
Insights gained from CRO, SXO, and UX research methodologies enable the creation of new user journeys optimized for conversion. These journeys are based on a data-driven approach and incorporate a renewed site design (UI and UX). New technical elements may include:
– Integrated Search Engine: Enhances content and product accessibility. A powerful search engine allows users to quickly find what they’re looking for, improving their satisfaction and increasing conversion chances.
– Dynamic Forms: Simplifies the information collection process and increases conversions. Dynamic forms can adapt to user responses, making the process smoother and less frustrating.
– Optimized Call-to-Actions (CTAs): Effectively encourages users to take action. CTAs must be clear, visible, and compelling to prompt users to perform a specific action.
– Rationalized code to avoid blocking scripts from a technical SEO perspective.
– Content triage because experience shows that a large portion of a site’s content is not viewed. This affects site performance in search engines or site navigation. Example: Having multiple pages to present similar information. 1 pricing page – 1 where we are page – 1 contact us page can be consolidated into one.
Preparing Your Website Redesign By Calling On Experts
In summary, preparing for a website redesign requires human resources that can be complex to find internally. Indeed, several issues may arise:
– Lack of time due to daily tasks. Outsourcing a redesign project will allow you to get support in your project.
– Technical skills required for a website redesign.
– Hiring a person dedicated to this project may not fill their schedule daily. This can then be a higher cost than hiring an external provider. – Someone within your company can coordinate everything alongside their usual tasks.
– Time, the main enemy of a website redesign, which can take several months or even years. The more your staff is busy, the less time they will have to follow and manage this project.
– Non-completion of daily tasks that would hinder your communication and marketing actions.
Therefore, properly preparing for a website redesign is essential to make your website a high-performing lead generation machine. Whether through CRO, SXO, and/or UX research, we can help you achieve your goals while ensuring long-term return on investment. If you want to discuss your website redesign, feel free to contact us. Also, check out our previous articles to help boost your digital strategy.
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