Before we can start work­ing on your new web design, there are sev­er­al impor­tant things you need to know. This is to ensure that your brand­ing is tar­get­ed and will help you towards achiev­ing your busi­ness goals.

Your Target Audience

If you don’t know who your audi­ence is, you won’t be able to reach them. pur­ple­plan­et’s job isn’t just to make your web­site look pret­ty. A web­site redesign needs to be done with spe­cif­ic goals in mind. The more you can tell us about your clients, the bet­ter we can build the site for those poten­tial cus­tomers. Every part of your web­site redesign should have your tar­get audi­ence in mind. Remem­ber, we aren’t design­ing the site for you – we’re design­ing it for the peo­ple who are going to buy your prod­ucts or ser­vices and, ulti­mate­ly, pay­ing your bills.

Important information for quality website redesign

Some impor­tant infor­ma­tion to know about your cus­tomer base could be:

• Age
• Gen­der
• Inter­ests
• Online behav­iour
• Brows­er preferences
• Pre­ferred view­ing devices

Most of this infor­ma­tion is avail­able in your Google Ana­lyt­ics dash­board. If you don’t have that set­up yet, it’s a must. We can help you with that too, but we’ll focus on that in anoth­er blog post.

Your Current Weaknesses

Why do you feel you have to update your site? We are con­stant­ly advis­ing clients on nec­es­sary updates and tweaks to their web­sites, with some of the most com­mon rea­sons being:

• The web­site looks out­dat­ed and worn
• Func­tion­al­i­ty on site ele­ments isn’t 100% reliable
• A com­peti­tor just launched a new or updat­ed website

These may be good grounds for a redesign but, with­out first under­stand­ing where your cur­rent site is fail­ing, the whole exer­cise could be pointless.

To estab­lish your cur­rent web­site’s weak­ness­es, use a com­bi­na­tion of ana­lyt­ics and test­ing. Check to see where peo­ple are leav­ing your web­site with­out con­vert­ing. Check with your cus­tomer ser­vice depart­ment for any issues cus­tomers may have had with your cur­rent web­site. A great look­ing web­site is only part of the solu­tion – if your cus­tomers aren’t con­vert­ing, then the rest of that solu­tion also needs work.

Your Best Content

When the time comes to redesign a web­site, many users want to start from scratch. Oth­ers want to amend very lit­tle, with just the odd tweak or cos­met­ic change. Nei­ther is the opti­mal approach. There’s every chance that you already have some great con­tent – by the same token, there may be too much con­tent that isn’t of inter­est, is out of date or no longer rel­e­vant to your busi­ness. A redesign is a good time to sep­a­rate the wheat from the chaff – to work out what is work­ing and what isn’t. Also remem­ber that good con­tent is like­ly to be help­ing your search rank­ings, so you’ll want to keep push­ing that.

All ele­ments of your con­tent should be considered:

• Page copy
• Images
• Videos
• Calls to action
• Forms

The is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to improve on what you have, not to start the entire process from zero.

Your Business Goals

If your aims are sim­ply “sell more“ or “get more leads“, then you need to reassess your mar­ket­ing strate­gies. Be more spe­cif­ic with your goals, such as “increase turnover by 30% over last year” or “gain ten new clients by year-end”.

If you don’t set goals, you have no yard­stick by which to mea­sure progress once your new web­site is active. The goals you set will also be key in the design phase, allow­ing your design­er to add focus, where nec­es­sary, to key ele­ments of your site.

Your Marketing Plan

A web­site, new or old, will not bring suc­cess to your busi­ness on its own. You will need to mar­ket the site, per­haps with cus­tom land­ing pages for down­loads, resources, webi­na­rs, etc. in order to point your poten­tial cus­tomers to the val­ue areas. The site should also be flex­i­ble enough to allow for quick and easy amend­ments or updates, for exam­ple adding a new call to action, a new video box or a spe­cial pro­mo­tion but­ton. Your web­site is nev­er “fin­ished” – it needs ongo­ing care and atten­tion, to ensure that your tar­get audi­ences are being reached, with the most appro­pri­ate con­tent. The best web­sites usu­al­ly get rebuilt after just a cou­ple of years, but the time between is used to bend and shape what is on offer, in order to main­tain the max­i­mum cus­tomer focus.

Web­site redesign is not just cre­ative – it’s also sci­en­tif­ic. It’s not just about look­ing good – it’s about offer­ing the right con­tent. A web­site rebuild is a fresh focus for your com­pa­ny that, with care­ful man­age­ment, can move your busi­ness to the next level.