Revamping Your Website: What It Means and Avoiding Bottlenecks
It may be one of the most feared phrases in the life of a business owner – website redesign. Revamping a website usually costs thousands, if not tens of thousands, of dollars. It can also be a tremendous time and energy suck, requiring your attention to make important decisions, add creative input, and review the developer’s work. And considering the average lifespan of a website is just over two and a half years (1), you may be wishing you could operate your business through carrier pigeon.
However, your website is an integral part of your marketing and company operations. And when it is time to invest in a website redesign, whether you are approaching how to redesign an existing WordPress site or another platform, it is an endeavor that is worth your time and money, and if you’re going to redo your website, you want to do it right.
One question we are often asked is, “How long does it take to build a good website, or redesign an existing website?” And we often answer with, “It depends,” which is probably another one of your least favorite phrases to hear. When it comes to a WordPress website redesign, there’s a lot you may have to leave in the hands of the experts, but you still have a significant role in the website design timeline. Understanding the process and knowing where the roadblocks usually can are go a long way in expediting your website redesign project timeline.
Process for Revamping Your Website
The steps for how to redo your website often vary, but here is an overview of the necessary ones:
- Discovery: This is where you set your website redesign strategy – establishing the goals of your website, who your audience is, and what improvements you need to make. You want to do a thorough assessment of what and how much content needs to change, what a rough sketch of your sitemap looks like, how many pages you need, and how those pages will relate to each other. The more thorough you are in thinking through these aspects, the better the picture you’ll have of the time and effort needed for your website revamp.
- Design: This means mocking up the look, feel, and style of your site – the colors, images, icons, and visual elements.
- Content: Here’s where you update existing and create the new content you’ll need to populate your new site. Many website redesigns include SEO (search engine optimization) to help make the site easier to find using a search engine.
- Development: This is where the rubber hits the road. All the concepts become reality as you build the infrastructure for how visitors will interact with your site. You want to make sure you consider user interface and user experience (UI/UX) in your redesign process to make the interaction a positive one.
- Review and approvals: In this step, all the necessary parties examine the revamping of your website and provide feedback.
- Integration: Most modern websites are not standalone channels. They probably connect to your e-commerce, customer relationship management (CRM), and analytics platforms, among others. And moving to the redesigned site can take some heavy lifting.
- Launch: Your beautiful new site is ready to go!
- Maintenance: No website is “fix and forget it.” You have to keep revisiting it to prevent having to do a complete overhaul again.
Factors that Impact the Timing for Redesigning a Website
When planning how to redo your website, some tasks tend to cause bigger bottlenecks than others. These are some of the big ones that you can control, as well as some tips for how you can avoid and overcome them:
- Content: Depending on how much updating you need to do, editing and creating content can eat up a lot of time in the revamping of your website. You can get ahead of this potential hurdle by starting it as soon as you know you are headed for a redesign. It also helps to have a clear picture of who on your team is responsible for which pieces.
- Integrating buyer personas: It’s important to know who you are building your website for. If you don’t know, you risk going far down the wrong road before you figure it out.
- Review and approval: The larger the team working on your site, the longer it will take to finalize. If the team revamping your website doesn’t consist of people with decision making power, it could significantly slow down the process. Set expectations among your team early for the review and approval process.
As with most of your business operations improvements, you want revamping your website to happen as quickly as possible. Even if it takes longer than you’d like, the time and effort you put into it will be worth it when you get more website traffic, improve conversions, and give your customers a better experience with your brand. If you are navigating how to redesign your WordPress website, Paradigm can provide you with the necessary tools to edit and maintain your website as a cost-saving strategy. With our full WordPress website training services, you’ll get a comprehensive understanding of how to update and manage your website from top to bottom. Contact us today to get started.
(1) https://www.orbitmedia.com/blog/website-lifespan-and-you/
About the Author
Rachel is the Founder and President of Paradigm Marketing and Design. Blending data, creativity, and strategic marketing expertise, Rachel and her team help organizations with a complex sale shorten sales cycles, increase the number of quality meetings sales teams conduct, and boost ROI. A recipient of several coveted industry awards, Rachel is a highly regarded figure in the marketing realm, widely recognized for her exceptional business, sales, and marketing acumen.
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