Five questions to answer before you redesign your website
A redesign goes faster and lands better when these five answers are written down before anyone opens a design tool.
Most redesigns start with how the old site looks. The better place to start is what the new one has to do. Write down answers to these five questions before any design work begins and every later decision gets easier.
1. Who is the site for?
Name the two or three groups who visit and what each is trying to decide. A construction company may be talking to homeowners, procurement teams and future employees at the same time, and each needs a different first page.
2. What should a visitor do next?
Pick one main action per audience: request a quote, book a consultation, download a brochure. If a page can’t say what its next step is, it probably shouldn’t exist.
3. What is the old site doing well?
Check your analytics and Search Console before you change anything. Pages that already bring in search traffic or enquiries need their addresses kept or redirected, or you risk losing what works.
4. Who will keep it up to date?
A site is only as current as the person who can edit it. Decide who will add projects, publish news and change prices, and make sure the admin is simple enough for them.
5. How will you know it worked?
Choose a few measures you can track from launch day — enquiries per month, calls from the site, load time on a phone — and record today’s numbers so you have something to compare against.
None of these answers needs a designer. But hand them to one and you’ll get a site built around your business, not around the last site you saw.