9 tips for website redesign and update

You’ve probably heard of Marie Kondo by now – she sparked an entire ordination movement and has a Netflix show called “Tidying Up With Marie Kondo.”

Also known as the KonMari method, its goal is to organize your home by getting rid of non-“joyous” items.

While her method applies more to dresser drawers and workspaces, there is no reason why you can’t use Marie Kondo on your website! Like your home and office, your site needs to be cleaned from time to time.

Here are nine website redesign and update tips to help you get the most out of the experience:

Do a content audit

You can’t see where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve been, can you? A content audit involves taking an inventory of all the content on your site so you can see what is relevant and what is not.

If you have blog posts that are years old, it’s time to decide if they are worth repurposing with updated content or removing them. We are doing this right now as we prepare to revamp our website. Many of our very old items are being removed or reused for future, more updated items.

Be careful not to delete a blog post that is driving a lot of your traffic, but don’t hang on to all the articles if the information is no longer relevant or if your target audience has changed.

Also, if you have products or services available online, make sure the description and price for each is up to date.

Review your content strategy

As you conduct your content audit, explore your analytics to see what content people are spending time on and what content is performing poorly.

Once you have a clear picture of your best performing articles, blogs, and videos, you can work on creating new, engaging content and / or repurposing the right material.

It can be helpful to create a content calendar that breaks down weeks or months by topic.

Let’s use marketing to health coaches as an example. In January, you may want to focus on healthy eating, breaking bad habits, and fun workouts to tie in with New Years resolutions.

In June, you could focus on water-based workouts, refreshing summer meals, and the importance of sunscreen. Come up with a list of ideas and start from there!

Make sure your pages look good on mobile devices

You have to keep mobile devices in mind every time you create new content, and now is the time to take a closer look at it.

Too many business owners put all their energy into website redesign, neglecting this critical part of the user experience. However, some business owners feel that their audience is not using mobile to access their site.

This is a poor assumption that can have huge ramifications. Many people browse your website, read your email newsletter, and check your blog on their smartphones. When in doubt, check your Google Analytics which will tell you how much website traffic is coming from mobile phones.

Make sure the web pages are easy to follow, the buttons are large enough to click, and that you don’t miss out on any content when you’re looking at it on a smartphone.

Check for broken links

This is another great way to dust off your website. Not only do broken links annoy and potentially scare visitors away (they often send them directly to your competition), but they are also bad for search engine rankings.

There are several tools that allow you to crawl your site for broken links, so use them.

Update your About Us page if necessary

Do you have bios of employees who left six months ago? Has your company received any new awards or recognitions?

If a potential customer comes to your site and sees outdated information, they will think twice before buying from you, so keep your About Us page fresh and polished.

Make sure your software and plugins are up to date

This is essential not only for order, but also for website security.

You may be tempted to ignore those messages telling you to update to the latest version, but they are essential to avoid security vulnerabilities and keep your site at optimal speed and functionality.

This is especially important if you have access to visitor information such as credit card numbers and email addresses.

Consider a site update

Maybe your business has evolved and you want to rebrand your logo. Or maybe you’re looking at photos from two years ago on your “What’s New” page.

Let’s use the example of a health and wellness website design. If a health coach originally worked with millennials on limited budgets, but is now targeting pregnant and lactating women for meal and exercise planning, they would need to add branding messages, photos, and content that appear for the new target audience.

Small changes can make a big difference, but be sure to change your brand for the right reasons if you are considering updating a key part of your brand identity. This is one of the articles on my blog that might help: The right reasons to rebrand your company logo.

Check for clear calls to action

You need to show your visitors what to do, or what they are likely to do is leave. Now is the time to fix clumsy calls to action not working (look at your stats for information) or look for missing pages.

Here are some things to keep in mind when optimizing your calls to action:

Use actionable text that engages your visitor (think “Download the ebook” and not “Click here”).

Make the CTA a main focus. If you have a lot of links, images and text competing for attention, your call to action could be lost.

Create urgency with words like “today” and “now.”

Experiment with the first person. According to an Unbounce study, changing the button text from the second person (“Start your free trial”) to the first person (“Start my free trial”) resulted in a 90% increase in clicks.

Strong CTA for the coaching website

Speed ​​up your site

Do some pages on your website take a long time to load?

According to MatchMetrics, 14% of your audience will start shopping elsewhere if your page load is slow, and 23% will simply stop the shopping experience or walk away from the computer.

Take a look at your hosting provider, image sizes, and installed videos and plugins to start getting to the root of what’s causing your delayed responsiveness.

Whether you are revamping your online presence or need to do a complete website redesign, get professional help if necessary.

Imagine having the time and energy to get creative, network, build strong business relationships and do what you love to do as an experienced, skilled and passionate all-in-one boutique firm relieves you of the burden of knowing how to do it. all yourself.