You wouldn’t show up to a client meeting in sweatpants; that would give the wrong impression.
In the same vein, your website needs to be well-designed, functioning properly, and enticing enough to attract visitors.
You need to give clients a good impression of your firm before they ever lay eyes on it – or you.
A great way to do this is through a website redesign. Redesigns give you an edge over your competition and show professionalism and experience.
When done correctly, a redesign can improve online conversions, and that means more clients.
Keep reading to learn more about the website redesign process and why it should be a part of your SEO strategy.
Why should I redesign my website?
You just should, that’s why. (Kidding – we would never accept that answer.)
In all seriousness, you should redesign your website to prove that you still exist. And not only that you exist, but that you’re relevant and useful, and that you’ll remain relevant and useful for the foreseeable future.
Relevance and usefulness (in other words, being authoritative and providing users with the answers they’re looking for) have a direct impact on both user experience and rankings in search engines.
Improving both of those things will help you generate qualified traffic and bring in more clients, helping grow your firm and granting you the option to expand if you so desire.
If you take nothing else from this blog, remember that website redesign will make your business relevant and useful, at least online. Not only that, but you’ll be proud of what you’ve helped create.
And now, what you’ve all been waiting for – our website redesign process!
EverSpark’s Website Redesign Step-by-Step Process
1. Initial Meeting
Your website redesign begins by meeting with our sales team and our Director of Web Development, Lizzy Reese, to discover the size and scope of your project.
Meeting with you and your team will help us determine how long the project is likely to take. During the meeting, we’ll show you work samples and case studies so you can get a feel for our approach.
We’ll also ask about current assets on your site (images, videos, testimonials, etc.).
Certain assets help our developers plan which templates to use and how to best lay out content and supplementary elements throughout your website. #organization
Lastly, we’ll speak with you and your team about your project goals.
This is where we’ll set a proposed budget and project timeline and determine the number of templates we’ll need to design.
2. Framework for SEO
SEO is crucial for successful redesign, but too many companies overlook it in favor of flashy design.
We do things a little differently at EverSpark.
Unlike other companies, we make our sites SEO-friendly from the get-go, identifying and fixing technical issues that, if left unchecked, will affect your rankings and performance in search engines.
Immediately after the initial phone call, our Development team will perform an in-depth analysis of your site, the findings of which will inform the project timeline and cost.
Generally, the more issues on your site, the longer it will take to redesign, although this isn’t always the case.
Other companies don’t perform site audits so early in the process, but it’s the only way to truly know what you’re up against.
We’ll perform the audit and draft the proposal within the week. Typically, you’ll receive a proposal within 48 hours of our initial meeting. Don’t worry – this proposal is way more exciting than the average. Pretty soon, you’ll have a graceful, attractive “new” site!
3. Branding & Customization Meeting
Post-proposal acceptance is when the fun begins. We’ll schedule a second meeting where we’ll discuss branding and the overall look and feel of your dream site.
By that time, we’ll have sent you a brief questionnaire which we’ll discuss together in the meeting.
This is where we’ll get an idea for the types of websites that you admire, things on your own site that you really want to change, and any technical requirements that you may have, such as syncing with your CRM system or sending over legacy tracking codes.
Other than those technical requirements, all you really need to bring to the meeting are your ideas for your dream site.
We’ll talk site inspiration. We’ll talk color schemes. We’ll talk customizations, like:
- Specialized content hubs
- Language sites
- Special functionality like calculators or animations
- Client portals
Now is the time to tell us what you wish your website could do. We can do it all. All we ask is that you come to the meeting with some ideas. A great, easy way to do this is to find a few example sites that you admire and a few that you can’t stand.
What do you like about one site, and what do you dislike about the other?
4. Mood Board & Design Direction
We lied – this is the fun part. Based on our branding and customization meeting, our Development team will put together a digital mood board that we’ll refer to for design direction (only after you approve it, of course).
Photography style and logo and font options are just a few of the elements that we’ll pin to the mood board.
5. Mockup Creation & Revision
A mockup is basically a model of what a page will look like post-redesign. You’ll see your chosen fonts, images, and layout come together in one place, and we’ll give you the files so you can share the design with your team.
Our law firm web design team likes to start with the homepage mockup. As the most important page on your site, it’s important to get the homepage as close to perfect as possible. It really informs the design of the rest of your website, so we’ll focus on making your homepage attractive and captivating.
Once that layout is approved, we can start designing the rest of the site.
As we present the mockups, feel free to request revisions. If you’re not in love with the design presented in mockup, we’ll revise until everything is pixel perfect.
6. Development Begins
After you and your team approve all mockup designs, the second-to-last step of the website redesign process begins.
This is where our development team implements the changes to your site. We’ll perform content migrations, moving all the existing content on your site to the new site and checking/formatting for best performance.
Next, come the page speed optimizations and the checks for responsiveness and mobile friendliness. We’ll also perform cross-browser checks to make sure your site appears the way it should on different browsers and devices.
The development will be mostly hands-off for you, but you will have the opportunity to request final revisions. We want you to be proud of your new site, so we’re happy to work out any cause for concern.
7. Launch Site!
Here it is – the moment we’ve all been waiting for. It’s almost time to relax and let your newly redesigned site usher in traffic. Almost, but first, we have to push it live (“launch”).
The “launch” process will look different depending on where the new website is located.
If it’s on a new server, we’ll need to update your DNS to reflect the change. If the redesigned site is on the same server, we’ll simply push the new site live.
In both instances, we check to make sure your SSL certificates are working properly, perform checks of tracking, redirects, and other functionalities, and go through each page on desktop and mobile to make sure everything loads smoothly.
Then, we run scans of the new site, identify errors such as broken images and 404s, and ensure everything is as it should be.
Redesign Performance Tracking
A shiny new blog is useless if you don’t know how it’s performing. Tracking is technically the 8th step of the website redesign process, but we left it out of our list because it’s not only something we can do – it’s something you should absolutely be involved in, and pretty simple to boot.
First, make sure you have website analytics installed so you can keep track of the number of visits, clicks, and many other actions that people take on your site (and how they got there in the first place). Google Analytics is a must, but you can also install Adobe Analytics, Google Search Console, or any of these lesser-known website monitoring software systems.
You should also have a plan for ongoing site maintenance. If you want your site to perform well, you need to prioritize its upkeep. Algorithms change daily, and what’s cutting edge today could be obsolete in a year.
EverSpark offers site maintenance packages for clients to stay competitive online. We’ll monitor your site and update it frequently for the best possible user experience.
Call us to learn more about our website redesign packages.
Website Redesign & SEO
How to Redesign a Website Without Losing SEO
Myth: SEO is something that only needs to be done once.
Reality: SEO is an ongoing process. To build up your website and have more ranking opportunities, you need to make SEO a priority in your website redesign.
Other agencies can design and develop your site, but they often overlook things and make mistakes that will ultimately hurt your SEO. We’ll go into detail about those mistakes in another blog, but those mistakes often feature missed redirects, low page speeds, missed content migrations, and lost tracking codes.
As one of the most thorough SEO marketing companies in the country, EverSpark takes a multi-pronged approach to make sure you’re set up for success before your website launches. These are just a few of the steps we take to make sure your SEO is up to speed:
- Download the URL structure of the current site for a record of all pages
- Develop your new site in a dev environment so it’s blocked from accidental indexing
- Test the new website for broken links, functions, etc.
- Conduct proper page redirects
- Check that the website’s robot.txt files are active and functioning
- Monitor the changes continuously
You’re likely “shopping around” for the best redesign agency (it’s okay, we understand). As you’re speaking with the designer, developer, or SEO professional, ask them about each of the elements listed above. What are the specific processes and tools that they use to check for broken site elements? How do they fix them?
If the person seems unsure or unfamiliar with one of those elements, run for the hills. There’s a good chance they’ll set your website back simply because they don’t know what they’re doing.
We, however, do know what we’re doing. For a thorough, painless, SEO-focused approach, contact our website design team today.
How long can I expect this project to take?
Every redesign project is different, and each has unique challenges. Because of this, we can’t give you a concrete answer for how long your redesign will take – at least not before speaking with you.
However, the typical website redesign process takes three to four months. For more complex redesigns, you can expect the project to take a little longer depending on the added scope. If you want a more specific timeline, feel free to contact our web development team.
Well, that’s it from us on our website redesign process. Questions? Concerns? Want to see some website redesign case studies? We’d love to hear from you.
Reach out to us at (877) 323-4661 or fill out the contact form and we’ll be in touch soon.