A website is the visual representation of your business, and it needs to be maintained continuously to attract customers and clients. For instance, when users want to know something about your business or services you offer, the first thing they would look up to is your website. Some companies even need to redesign their website to make it more appealing and craft an engaging digital presence.
Redesigning an entire website is a challenging task, as designers need to rebuild everything from scratch. Moreover, a website brings multiple new opportunities for a new business, so the new design must adhere to your business goals. But most designers often overlook common mistakes while redesigning a website, which later affects the online presence of the business.
In this article, we will talk about the some web design mistakes that most developers often make when redesigning a website from scratch.
Mistakes to Avoid While Redesigning a Website
There are many things that need to be taken into consideration to avoid any repercussions when redesigning a website. The most vital thing to keep in mind is not to repeat the mistakes you have made on earlier versions of the site.
1.Not Having a Goal for Website Redesign
Before you begin with the website redesigning, have you given it a thought? Usually, when you are willing to fix a problem, you need to find out the problem and its reason. The same concept applies to website redesigning. Without analyzing the purpose behind website redesign, there is no benefit of redesigning it.
Besides, there should be a specific goal behind it. For example, most businesses redesign their website to make it more appealing, attractive, dynamic, and user-friendly so that their customers find it easy to navigate through the website. Having a goal gives you a better perspective of things and helps you understand the process and divide the workload equally.
However, if you find it complicated to set goals for your site redesigning, then do research on your sites similar to your business. It will help you analyze where your web app is lacking in terms of design. This way, you’ll be able to set up your goals quickly.
2.Not Analyzing Your Current Web App
Most enterprises, especially SMEs, often hire a web development company to revamp their site without analyzing their current web design. Without studying your existing web design, it is almost impossible to set goals and get the results you want to accomplish with the website redesign. Thus, analyzing your site to find where the problems actually lie is crucial before starting the redesigning.
To overcome this mistake, do an audit of your website’s analytical data and KPIs; it will help you understand all the problems related to your site’s current version. Moreover, you should monitor these things even after redesigning your site so that you can quickly fix the mistakes if there are any. Keeping this information in mind, you’ll be able to analyze how the redesign has improved your site.
3.Giving Importance to Aesthetics rather than Functionality
Every business needs a website that looks more appealing aesthetically and works better. But most designers often emphasize the aesthetics rather than focusing on the functionality of the web pages, which later becomes a problem for the business. For a website, it is crucial to have better functionality as compared to the aesthetic.
The functionality of a site defines how your site behaves and performs while navigating through the web pages. If users are unable to access and navigate through the site, they might move to another website. So, focus on the functionality above everything, even if you’re redesigning your site. To check the functionality of your site, you can use a cross browser testing tool like LambdaTest.
4.Not Giving Enough Time to Designers
Redesign a website is more like revamping it from scratch. Every element needs to be reworked in order to make it compatible with others. For instance, it includes every step involved in developing a website, such as research, content creation, wireframing, development, and testing. Thus, it requires enough time to gather all the information and redesign the website.
Most businesses make the mistake of setting unrealistic deadlines to complete the work, which in turn spoils it. There are many complexities that need to be taken care of while redesigning a website. So, give designers enough time to do their research and redesign the website as per their timeline.
5.Not Analyzing Your Budget before Redesigning
Another big mistake that small businesses often make is not setting a specific budget for their website redesigning. Well, you simply cannot redesign your site without a price unless you’re a professional web designer. In most cases, companies hire a web design company to redesign their site but don’t have a specific budget to begin with.
Earlier, web designing was limited to presenting online brochures, but the scenario has entirely changed in the past few years. Now, businesses are competing with each other to deliver a customer-centric web app with advanced functionality, which comes with a price tag. So, before beginning with the website redesigning, consider what things you want to add and do you have the required budget for it or not.
6.Making the Website More Complicated
Simplicity is the key to customer satisfaction and success, and it has even become a new trend in website designing. The more simplistic the design approach you use, the more attractive it becomes to the users. But many designers give the web app a complicated design with multiple options on a single page, which confuses users.
Instead of giving multiple options or buttons on a single page, try minimalizing the options. It will encourage visitors to stay focused while allowing them to improve their average time on the page. Moreover, don’t clutter the home page with unnecessary information; simplify the navigation bar as much as possible. With a simplified web design, you’ll be able to engage users with your business.
7.Not Creating a Mobile-Friendly Website
It is not hidden from businesses that most users use smartphones to access the internet rather than a desktop, making it crucial for a website to be mobile-friendly. In fact, developing a mobile-friendly website has become a necessity because it helps in SEO ranking as well. As per many surveys, the majority of web searches come from mobile users, which is growing with time.
So, you must inform your designers to create a mobile responsive site that is compatible across most mobile browsers. However, if you find it challenging to test your site’s mobile view across multiple mobile devices, you can always opt for LT Browser, which is ideally developed to test web apps across mobile OS and browsers.
8.Not Optimizing the SEO and Content Strategy after Redesign
Your site is at the last stage of designing with all the features and functionality, and it’s ready to launch soon. But, have you thought about its search engine optimization, or do you have a content strategy in mind to keep your online presence on track?
SEO optimization makes your site available on search engines. If a site is not SEO-friendly, users won’t get to know about its presence. Thus, while redesigning your site, make sure you ask the designing team to make it SEO-friendly while following SEO’s best practices. For example, make sure there are no broken links, URLs, Redirects, Loading speed issues, Image optimization issues, etc.
Another important thing related to SEO is having a content strategy in mind before relaunching your site. Using the same content on your redesigned site will not help you get a higher rank on search engines. So, write entirely fresh content from the current market perspective while keeping all the keywords and metrics in mind.
Conclusion
After a few years, redesigning a website becomes crucial, as it helps businesses stay in touch with the latest trends while maintaining their online presence. But, redesigning a site is not as easy as it seems; there are plenty of things that need to be taken care of. And most businesses often make many mistakes while revamping their business site. Here, we have highlighted the most common mistakes that you must avoid while redesigning a site. If there is something that you would like us to add, let us know in the comment section.
