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Too often businesses decide that they want a new website for no particular reason. Often this decision is made because the owners of the business themselves feel the current design is tired and they want something ‘new and fresh’. This is where the trouble begins.

A website revamp should be approached with care and attention, and there should be definite reasons for heading down this, usually very expensive, path.

Who Is The New Website For?

Your website is for your potential and current customers – not for you. You spend far more time on the website than anyone else does, and just because you are tired of the current ‘look’ doesn’t mean anyone else is.

The desire for new aesthetics is not a good reason to throw away thousands of euro on an unnecessary redesign.

Know Your Reasons

Your website’s purpose is to help others find the services / products you provide, and to help you convert them from browsing visitors, to interested prospects, and ultimately, to new clients.

If you want a new website because you want to attract more leads, and you want to convert more leads into customers – and your current website doesn’t allow you to do this – well then you should look at getting a new website.

Website redesign is sometimes necessary, but it is important to have good reasons for making that decision.

Know Your Objectives

Have a clear plan for what you hope to achieve from a website redesign.

Research has shown that 37% of marketers did not measure any metrics for their last website redesign and 1/3 of marketers were unhappy with their last website redesign. Seems to me that those statistics are related.

If you don’t know what you want to achieve, how will you know if you have achieved it? Those with a clear plan and actionable list will know whether they have achieved their goal, and are therefore more likely to be happy with the finished result.

Avoid Pitfalls

Make sure that the company you employ to execute your redesign knows what your objectives are, and that they are capable of meeting them. A good website designer will know that what your customer wants is a clean, simple, easy to navigate website (with no flash!).

Ensure as well that they know how to retain the vale of your existing website during the change over e.g. 301 redirects to avoid losing SEO rankings and inbound links.

Take Control

It’s your business and you make decisions every day, based on the circumstances, to make it the best business possible. Your website should be run the same way.

You should be able to make decisions every day, adding and editing your website content to suit the circumstances. You should be able to add a new blog post, or a new landing page for a special offer you’re running, or even add a page about a brand new product or service. You should not have to run back to your website designers every time you want to add in a comma, never mind new content.

Make sure that your new website puts the reins in your hands. Ensure that you have a good content management system that is easy to use; this will allow you to make changes so that your website is a living, breathing part of your business which will grow organically over time.

So, rethink . . . do you really need that redesign?