Free Website Redesign Process: From Planning to Launch

Redesigning your website can be a daunting task, but with a clear plan, you can achieve a stunning new look without breaking the bank. The free website redesign process is a cost-effective way to breathe new life into your online presence.

First, you'll need to assess your current website's performance and identify areas for improvement. This involves analyzing metrics such as bounce rate, engagement time, and conversion rates.

A website redesign process typically starts with a discovery phase, where you gather information about your target audience, their needs, and preferences. This phase helps you create a new design concept that resonates with your audience.

The next step is to create a wireframe, a simple visual representation of your website's layout and structure. A wireframe helps you plan the placement of content, navigation, and other elements.

Project planning is key to a successful website redesign. It's essential to create a thorough project plan to avoid turning your project into a mess.

Download a free project plan template to stay on track. A project plan will help you identify and prioritize tasks, set realistic deadlines, and ensure everyone involved is on the same page.

Consult with the person doing the work to determine a reasonable time frame for completing tasks. This will help prevent unrealistic expectations and ensure a smooth project flow.

A thorough appraisal of the existing website and used marketing technology is crucial before starting the project. This includes auditing the site content, SEO, and conducting keyword research and competition analysis.

Auditing the site content will help you identify what's working and what's not. This will also help you build a customer profile, which is essential for understanding your target audience.

You can't redesign a website without considering the people it's for – your customers. Building a customer profile will give you valuable insights to inform your redesign decisions.

Creating an action plan tracker for each page will help you stay organized and on track. Use your current site map to get started and label your column headings with page-specific tasks, goals, person responsible, target delivery date, and date completed.

Having concrete data will help you achieve your website redesign goals. Start with a thorough project plan, and you'll be well on your way to a successful website redesign.

Understanding your audience is the key to a successful website redesign. Knowing who your visitors are and what they want to achieve on your site is crucial.

You'll want to define your target audience in the RFP, and consider this information valuable when it comes to your website redesign. Audience research plays a vital role in the website strategies created by agencies like Digital Silk.

To understand your visitors, ask yourself who is coming to your website, and why. By identifying your most valuable pages, you can determine what's driving people to visit them. Research from Google shows four main intent types that drive people to a website: 'I want to know', 'I want to go', 'I want to do', and 'I want to buy'.

Here are the four main intent types that drive people to a website:

To create a clear picture of who you're redesigning for, consider creating customer personas. Personas help you determine who your ideal customers are, what their main intent or 'driver' is, and what they want to achieve on your site. For example, a project manager might be looking to buy software that helps her automate tasks.

You can create personas by collecting data from on-site surveys, customer interviews, and chat logs. This information will help you paint a clear picture of who your customers are and what they want to achieve on your site.

Understanding your audience will help you make informed decisions about your website redesign. By knowing who your visitors are and what they want to achieve, you can create a website that meets their needs and goals.

A website's layout can make or break retention and conversion rates, with bounce rates skyrocketing if it's poorly laid out.

Focus on usability before beauty when designing your website. Consider the major design elements that will affect user conversions and sales, such as typography, color scheme, and texture.

The wrong font size, spacing, and type can kill your conversion rate. Font and font families are crucial to legibility and feel.

Color accounts for a shocking 85% of purchasing decisions, so choose a color scheme that sends the right message to your users.

Different textures can give visual interest and keep users engaged, presenting a customer-focused experience.

Here are some key design elements to consider:

Emphasizing user-centric design can have a huge payoff, with every $1 spent on UX design yielding $100 in value. Simple improvements like faster page loads, clearer navigation, and mobile responsiveness can go a long way in pleasing visitors.

Before launching your free website redesign, it's essential to prepare carefully to avoid common mistakes that can lead to a mess of mixed-up efforts.

Planning is crucial to ensure that your redesign project stays on track. Too often, attempts to improve a website fail from the start or don't do much, even after spending a lot of money and effort.

To avoid these pitfalls, take the time to create a solid plan that focuses on what's most important. Knowing what can go wrong helps you make informed decisions and allocate resources effectively.

If you don't plan carefully, what starts as a big opportunity can quickly become a mess of mixed-up efforts that don't lead anywhere.

Launching your website redesign is a big milestone, but it's not the end of the process. You've got to keep gathering user feedback to make sure your site is still user-friendly and meeting your goals.

Gathering user feedback after launching your redesigned website is crucial. You can use surveys and feedback forms, place them on your website, and ask specific questions about the user experience, design, navigation, and content.

Surveys and feedback forms are a great way to collect user feedback. You can also conduct usability tests with users to observe how they interact with your website and where they might encounter difficulties.

Web analytics tools can also help you identify areas where users are getting stuck. Use them to track user behavior on your site and identify pages with high bounce rates.

Social media and email can be a more informal way to gather insights from your audience. Encourage feedback through your social media channels or email.

Here are some ways to collect user feedback:

To find the ideal agency for your website redesign, you'll need to collect bids from agencies that meet your criteria and then filter potential vendors. This process will ultimately lead you to partner with the agency most qualified to work on your redesign.

A three-step approach is recommended to choose the right partner: shortlist to top 10 based on proposals, shortlist to top 3 based on research and reviews, and interview top candidates. This will give you the opportunity to discuss details like the agency's processes, deliverables, capabilities, and communication style.

Researching the shortlisted bidders can include portfolio reviews, client testimonials, and more. You can also conduct additional research to narrow down your options.

Interviewing your potential RFP partners can help you narrow the vendor field before sending out your final RFP. Success for your project isn't predicated on the number of RFP replies you'll receive, but rather on the quality of responses from two or three digital agencies.

Here's a suggested step-by-step process to follow:

By following this process, you'll be able to choose the agency that offers you the most confidence in their ability to deliver your project within its full scope.

Analyzing your current website is a crucial step in a free website redesign. You need to identify what's working and what's not.

Start by looking critically at your current design. What's working? What's not? You might have already identified specific problems, like frequent abandoned shopping carts on your e-commerce site.

Using Google Analytics, study traffic patterns. Do you have a high bounce rate? Which pages receive the most frequent and fastest bounces? This will help you understand where your visitors are dropping off.

Visual reports like heat maps or scroll maps can also provide valuable insights into visitor behavior. You can see where they scroll, click, and interact with your site.

Recordings can provide even more in-depth information about website visitors' activities on specific pages. You can see where they're getting stuck or confused.

By understanding your current website's pain points, you can make informed decisions about what changes to make during the redesign process. This will save you time and resources in the long run.

When redesigning your website, it's essential to plan for scalability and flexibility. This means designing your website with the future in mind.

Use a content management system (CMS) that allows for easy updates and scalability. This will save you time and effort in the long run, as you won't need to redo your website from scratch every time you want to add new features.

Even if you're launching mainly informational pages initially, ensure the CMS and templates easily allow adding advanced functionality later, like ecommerce or subscriptions, without mass rework. This will give you the flexibility to adapt to changing needs and growth.

Brainstorm features to include today and how offerings may grow over the next few years. Consider what features will be essential for your business to succeed in the future.

Here are some key considerations to keep in mind:

Testing is an essential step in the website redesign process. It's a chance to catch errors and make sure everything is working as it should before launching the site.

You'll want to test that all the buttons work, and look through every image to ensure they're displaying correctly. This is also a good time to test for page speed and proper coding optimizations. Usability testing can also help you identify any areas where users might get stuck.

According to the experts, 89% of consumers turn to a competitor after a poor user experience. So, it's crucial to make sure every element of your website's design guides users toward taking action, whether that's making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or contacting your team.

To test your website, you can use A/B testing, which involves comparing the performance of different versions of a page or element. For example, you could test whether moving a video above the fold on your homepage makes a difference to user engagement. If it does, you can continue to make changes and test the results.

Here are some ways to test the effectiveness of a few website designs:

By testing your website before launch, you can catch errors and make sure everything is working as it should. This will help you avoid any last-minute surprises and ensure a smooth launch.

Wireframes and mockups are crucial in visualizing your website before it goes live. They allow you to place each element precisely on the page.

Grid-style websites have become the norm, and your web designer can create wireframes and mockups for you to evaluate.

Starting a website redesign can feel overwhelming, but it's essential to break it down into manageable tasks. Take your website redesign one element at a time, focusing on what elements will extend across all pages, excluding landing pages.

Carefully consider the visual elements on your blog pages, as they deserve just as much attention as the rest of your site. Don't neglect your blog pages, and make sure to place CTAs thoughtfully and size images correctly.

As you begin the process of refreshing your website, it's essential to take stock of the features that are currently working for your brand. The filter options on Tiffany & Co.'s website have been a hit with users, allowing them to find exactly what they're looking for.

The extensive filter options on Tiffany & Co.'s website include the ability to filter by collections, materials, gemstones, and price. This feature has received positive feedback from users.

You'll want to highlight these features in your Request for Proposal (RFP) to let the agency know what you're looking to keep and potentially expand or upgrade.

Starting a new design can be overwhelming, but breaking it down into smaller tasks makes it more manageable. Every dollar spent on user experience design yields $100 in value, a 9900% return on investment.

It's essential to identify the elements that will be consistent across all pages, excluding landing pages, and those that are specific to individual pages. This will help you create a solid foundation for your redesign.

Don't neglect your blog pages, as they deserve careful consideration, including CTA placement, image sizing, and other visual elements. Every detail matters in creating a user-friendly experience.

By prioritizing user-centric design, you'll be able to tackle the pain points that frustrate your users the most. Research shows that simple improvements like faster page loads and clearer navigation can have a significant impact.

A refresh is a great way to give your website a new look and feel without making major changes. This can be a good option if you're not looking to overhaul your entire website.

You can update your website's look & feel with a new color palette and typography, or make small UX tweaks to individual page templates. This is an example of a refresh.

A refresh and a redesign may seem similar, but they have key differences. A redesign usually implies that the code and visual appearance of a website change significantly, whereas a refresh takes place when the core structure and functionality of the website remain largely untouched.

Here's a quick rundown of the differences:

Whether you call it a refresh or a redesign, the key is to ask the right questions and approach the process thoughtfully.

Carefully evaluating your top 10 competitors is crucial to making your website better than the competition's. This involves checking out their websites to see what strategies they're using and what they're doing wrong.

Your competitors' websites can serve as a model for improvement, so take note of what they're doing well. Redesign your website to load faster, offer more intuitive navigation, and present better offers.

Conducting a competitive analysis requires a thorough understanding of your current website's challenges.

Identifying your website's pain points is crucial to determine what changes need to be made to improve it. This includes issues with converting leads, users bouncing quickly, slow loading speed, and confusing navigation.

Your website's metrics, such as bounce rate, can provide valuable insights into what areas need improvement. Agencies can use this information to create a more effective redesign, like Digital Dilk, which helped reduce bounce rate after a redesign.

Understanding your current challenges helps agencies tailor their approach to address your specific needs.

Evaluating your top competitors is a crucial step in making your website stand out. Carefully examine their websites to see what they're doing right.

Their websites can serve as inspiration for your own design. Take note of what strategies they're using to engage visitors and drive conversions.

Redesigning your website to load faster is a must. Aim for a load time of under 3 seconds to keep visitors engaged.

Intuitive navigation is key to a good user experience. Make sure your website's menu is easy to use and understand.

Presenting better offers than the competition can be a game-changer. Identify what your competitors are offering and find ways to top them.