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Why redesign your website?

Redesigning a website is often thought of as being more of a graphic design process-like taking an older website and giving it a totally new look so visitors and customers will take notice. Or adding more content to the website so information is readily available to existing or potential customers.

This approach has resulted in many websites which are often overly complex and confusing for the website visitor. Many websites fail to capture any information about the visitor, and often contribute little to the qualification of potential customers or assisting with the pre-sales process.

Another reason why re-designing websites is necessary is that the Internet has evolved. Bandwidth has increased, new technologies have emerged, website users' expectations have changed. What was considered to be an extravagance a few years ago, is now a necessity.

Because the Internet is evolving so quickly, less sophisticated websites tend to age more quickly than interactive websites, especially as more Internet users come to expect more from a website.

Redesign Considerations

While it is true that your website may be the first contact a prospective client has with your company or organization, and the look and feel is definitely important in making a great first impression, there are many other redesign considerations, such as:

• What new website capabilities are needed?
• Can the navigation be improved?
• Is it difficult or time-consuming to make changes to your website?
• How are website visitors currently using your website?
• What is your website conversion rate?

If you do not have the answers to these questions, please read on and I will explain in detail why it is important to talk about what your website is currently doing-or not doing-to help with your marketing efforts, and how to best approach re-designing your website so it not only looks good, but works for your business.

Evaluate your current website

It is best to start with a list of what your website does, and how well it does it. If you have access to website statistics for the last year or two, you can see clearly what pages of the website are being frequented more often than other pages, what are common entry and exit pages and the like.

Your website evaluation list should include tasks like providing general information for customers, company background for new customers and a rating of how well you think the website performs each particular task. It may be difficult for you to be objective, so feel free to talk to a few customers who use the website or friends who are not familiar with your website and who are not afraid to tell you what they think about it.

Next create a list of of what your web site does not do, either because of outdated design, or capabilities it does not have. List all of the features or capabilities that you would like the website to have.

Lastly, create one sentence which describes the primary purpose of your website and one secondary purpose.

Everything on your list should support your primary and secondary purpose, if not, your website may have unnecessary content.

Additional features to consider

Website redesign can include the following features:

• Improved page redesign
• Keyword and advanced search
• Content Management System
• Applications for specific tasks such as email newsletter, online operator, knowledge base, customer login area, content management system, etc.

Set Realistic Goals

While it is important to develop a comprehensive list of new features, content or capabilities you want your website to have, it is much more important to first identify one or two realistic goals for your project.

Even if you have an unlimited website budget, by focusing on adding one or two capabilities to your website which can in turn generate more qualified leads may yield more return on your investment in the short run, than spending six to eight months totally redesigning the website with lots of new features.

Establish a realistic website budget

It is important to establish an exact budget, or a budget range for your website redesign.

Even if you do not know what all the website design requests will cost, it is good to know before you start the process of hiring a web designer or web development company what you can spend on the project or at least on the first phase of the project.

Often the thinking is to use the proposal process to determine the project budget based on what all the requested website features or project work costs. This is like shopping for a car based on features alone-in the end you will have a car, but it may be too expensive and impractical.

While it is a common practice to get several bids or proposals on a website project, everyone will be disappointed when website proposals are based on unrealistic expectations or budgets that just do not allow you to do everything you want to do with your project.

By letting a potential vendor know up front that you can spend a certain amount and that you are looking to get as many features for that price range as possible is a reasonable approach.

Group website features into phases

If you are considering a complete redesign with many new features for your website, consider grouping your requests into two or three phases and having your website developer estimate each phase of the project.

This approach will at least allow you to have the highest priority website requests in the initial redesign, with less urgent website needs to be created in a later project phase.

Provide a Request For Proposal (RFP) to web developers

Consider creating a comprehensive Request For Proposal document based on the above website evaluation and prioritizing.

The more details you provide in the RFP, the likely you are to have all of your website redesign needs met. Vague RFP documents that lack details will typically result in a project proposal that may not address key problems or objectives you have for your website.

While this step will take some time, by documenting all your project goals, expectations and areas of the project you would like to focus on, potential website development companies can then provide you a detailed proposal.

Vann Baker, President of Design-First, has been creating websites since 1995, from small business websites to large ecommerce, social network and informational websites using content management systems. For more information on creating a website and more, go to: http://www.design-first.com/website

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