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Home FAQs What questions should I ask about redesigning my site?
What questions should I ask about redesigning my site? PDF Print E-mail
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You should not wait until there is a complete change in company procedures or a complete over haul of your company before you start thinking about updating or changing styles and information on your website. Websites are fashionable and are an advertising media for your company. It is essential that your website is constantly updated, forward, fast moving and attractive looking for your clients. If not your clients will get bored of visiting it. Show that you are a innovative company.

Look at the simple yet essential steps listed below and re-evaluate your website and the needs of your company. Then contact us with your thoughts and ideas!

Evaluation of Your Existing Site
Evaluation of Your Existing Site
What do you like/ dislike about your existing site? What are your competitors sites like and what are they offering that you would also like to offer? What are the successes and failures of your existing site? Ask a few laymen/ a few friends to check out your website and give you a clear, honest view of your website including the editing. Ask for a few points from each person, points that will enhance your website. Write them down as a basis of your new redesign.

Does It Catch Attention?
Does It Catch Attention?
Does your website stand out? What do people remember about your website once they have left? Is there something particular that makes it eye catching and memorable? Will they bookmark the site so they can return. Try and think of some things that will make your website memorable and stand out. Try and find some information/news/products/services that will make the visitor bookmark your site and desire to return to it.

Why do People do visit your Site?
Why do People do visit your Site?
What are the main reasons that people come to your website? What do they enjoy when they come? Are they coming for news and information or to buy products? Now list the essential reasons why people come now, and why you would like them to come, or why you would like to encourage them to come to your website. What more would you like to offer?

Research your Competitor's Websites
Research your Competitor's Websites
Keep in front! Find out what your competitors are doing and what they are offering on their website. What can you learn from them? Check competitors from around the globe and see what new ideas you can incorporate into your site to show up to date ideas in design, technology and communication. Check out key words and phrases, terminology and products. Note some improvements that you can incorporate in your redesign ideas.

Target Audience
Target Audience
Decide who is your target audience. Who mostly visits your site? Which type of audience would you like to encourage more of? Use empathy. Become the visitor to the site and see what you would like or expect to see if you were visiting your website for the first time. Is it appealing to your audience? List four categories of people and their points of interests and see how you can best serve them.

Appeal to your Audience
Appeal to your Audience
Use words, phrases and catchy headlines that will attract your target audience. Don't forget to use graphics and photos. Why not also include polls, return contact forms and feedback forms that will encourage your visitors to give an opinion or ask a question. 

Theme and 'Style and Feel'
Theme and 'Style and Feel'
What is the mood or feel that you want to communicate? Decide on the overall theme and "look and feel" of the site. For example: do you want a traditional, old, tudor theme, fun and colourful or corporate and efficient? What type of feel will your website have? Is it academic, historical, aimed at families, professional bodies or comical?
Resellers
Write three adjectives to describe the way you want your site to feel and three adjectives describing the style you would like to give your website (naturally reflecting relevance to your work sector).

Trust & Credibility
Trust & Credibility
What will make your visitor believe you? What credibility can you offer on your website.  Imagine going to see a doctor.  What is it that gives you a sense of trust that he will carry out his job 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 offer guarantees for your products. Also if possible try and include real life testimonies by reputable people or companies 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.

Content
Content
This is one of the main selling points. People want to read about what you do, what services you offer, what products you have for sale. They will also be expecting to find out further information about your products and have clear indications on how they can contact you and how they can buy these products.

Text
Text
It is essential that your website text is clear and well written. Older websites used to emphasise more the design and now visitors and companies are recognising that the text also plays an essential role. If you are not using our editorial service then get a team of people together, with a variety of experience that can write and clearly edit your text to ensure that it is up to date, accurate and communicates the message you wish to give. If possible, use someone with good grammar and language experience that also has an editing background.  Try and provide more than just your company information also provide articles and other links that attract people to the site.

Site Meters
Site Meters
Check in your site meter statistics and see which pages were popular on your site and try and identify why these were the most popular. Maybe some content or text or design of some of the page needs redesigning. Some key headings and logos can also make a real difference.

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 site meter (provided with all our sites) will analyse what your visitors are doing once the go to your site.

Easy to Navigate
Easy to Navigate
Navigation is a key element. A visitor needs to be able to find what he is looking for quickly and easily. Sometimes adding just more text is not the answer. A good navigation system must be able to identify the text and be able to direct your visitor to that section. A new design means that careful thought is given to the information and the visitor. It is ideal that no information is two click or more away. Check also that all buttons are clickable, that links are available, are pages correctly categorised and logically set out. Can visitors get access to old content archives? 

Personal Interest Effective Action!
Personal Interest Effective Action!
A good way to build trust and credibility for your company is to provide your visitors with an insight in your company. This may include a summary of key members of your staff, possibly a CV or company newsletter, recent news items that your office has been involved in and maybe photos of your office events or news publications.

Don't forget the Search Engines!
 Don't forget the Search Engines!
Another point to bear in mind, when thinking about your site is how do I redesign my site and write my text with the search engines in mind? Make sure you decide on keywords. These are essential because the robots working in the search engines analyse your website text and pick out key words and the frequency that they are mentioned. Since many pages on your site can be indexed by a search engine this becomes an important strategy in attracting visitors.

Importance of Key Words
Importance of Key Words
Why not analyse the site statistics on your site meter and check out the key words that were entered by visitors to your site. From this you will be able to identify your target audience and whether you were able to match the needs of that audience. Did you audience match the one that you are trying to attract to your site. If not have a look again at your site content and design and see how this can be changed to appeal to that target audience in a larger way. Check to see if the keywords were those matched by your key audience factors listed in the target audience paragraph.

Up to Date News
Up to Date News
Visitors to your website must be reassured that you are interested in your site. If your website looks old, outdated, unloved, uninteresting (a bit like magazines in dentist waiting rooms), they will assume that you are not interested in your business, your business appearance and that you do not check your website or its feed back regularly. You may lose their trust in your company and they may go elsewhere.

Product & Service Information
Product & Service Information
Are you products and services easily visible to your visitors? Can they locate your products and services quickly? Are they encouraged to do business with you because it is easy? Can they contact you for further information or questions? Think about what your customer will need to do business with you and ensure that your website provides this in a clear way. Do not drown your visitors with unnecessary steps. If they are not needed, do not overflow, delete them.

Updating Information
Updating Information
Are you adding valuable information for your visitors? Try and analyse what your website can offer to your customers. Like a shop window that wishes to invite people to look further, (and we all like to see changes in a shop window), make sure that your window is enticing, interesting, offers information, invites people to look further on the site, and it is educational.

Interaction
Interaction
Can your visitors exchange information with you? If you sell a product can the customer ask questions on the product, request written information about your services and products, or find out how an order is progressing? Do you have a facility to reply to emailed questions and do you check the emails received daily? Do you keep these people as references so that you can send them further email or printed information on your company's products and services? This type of interaction facilitates the transaction and people will come back to you assured that the service they find and use is stress free, if it isn't they will find someone else.

Graphics and Animation
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. Our designers will ensure that the load of your site will be the most efficient possible, ensuring that the visitor to the site will not get tired of waiting before the site has arrived. The designer may recommend that you change the logo or some of the graphics and photos. Be assured that if they recommend this, it is their experience which is speaking! They know what is best to include in a website to ensure a smooth loading. New software makes it possible to make better graphics that are smaller and load faster.
Forums
Forums
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 people behind the site. Collaboration between visitors can give a lot of value to your visitor's experience. Discussion forums provide this exchange of information. If this information is archived it can be a good way of guarding information for future visitors.

International Market
International Market
If all or part of your audience is global then you need to consider a few things. Why not consider one of our translation packages? We offer a selection of the most spoken European languages that will open up your website services and products to a whole new market. To millions of more people.
 
Speed
Speed
What needs to be compromised to ensure speed? Site speed and server speed is one of the major aspects that can slow down the loading of a site and flash graphics may also have this effect.  Only so much information can travel through. This is why often pictures, sound and other animation need to be carefully counted. Most people, once they see the downloading sign often just move on to the next site. It is a 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 whether it needs to be included at all.

Interactivity
Interactivity
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. A blog and poll is an excellent way to involve your visitors and to get feedback. Forums can also help with ranking and provide excellent interaction tools.
 
Let your customers enjoy their visit
Let your customers enjoy their visit
An excellent tool that should be exploited more is the polls system. This allows a visitor to the site to give an opinion on various aspects of the site. You can ask their opinion on the information contained, whether it was useful, helpful, interesting. Then use this information to improve your marketing campaigns and to redesign your website to make it more user friendly for your customers.
 
Redesigning your Website - It is a Team Work!
Redesigning your Website - It is a Team Work!
As you will have noted from the paragraphs above the building of a site is not just coding. It involves design work and marketing research. That is why most web designers have graphic design  and advertising experience. The marketing research which your design team will undertake to ensure that your website portrays the right message to the desired audience. They know what your audience is expecting to see and it is their aim to provide this. The text is very important and editing too. Either you can provide this or SWDL offer this service for you. A web development team is important because each member has a strength and put together it provides efficient, eye catching and marketing websites. We know the pitfalls and we know the shortcuts!

Once you have worked through this redesign list contact us and we will arrange a meeting to discuss your website requirements.



Interested? Why not contact us!

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