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Madison, Wisconsin
Powderkeg Web Design
May 4, 2021

Common Considerations for a Website Redesign

James
James
Common Considerations for a Website Redesign

Your website is often the cornerstone of your marketing and business development strategy. Your prospects, customers, potential employees, all use your website as a way to learn more about your business.

Needless to say, having a well-designed and developed website is important.

As we work with clients on their redesign process, we often encounter some common considerations on why they want to undergo a redesign or new web design project. In the live video discussion below, Elise and I talk through these considerations together.

Updated Design

At the most basic level, having a refresh to the design of the website is a strong genesis for the project. Here are some key items:

  • Accessibility – As businesses work to make their marketing strategy more inclusive, a focus on accessibility has become more important than ever. By removing barriers that exist on your current website, you’ll be able to reach more people and provide a better experience.
  • Foundation of Marketing Strategy – Whether you are running paid ads, direct mail, or face-to-face discussions, your sales and marketing campaigns are often sending people back to your website for further engagement. As the foundation of your marketing strategy, you could hamstring your other campaigns if your website is not up to snuff.
  • Brand Evolution – As your brand inevitably evolves over the years, your website needs to play catch-up. Whether it’s major changes like a full brand identity redesign, or just smaller changes that follow industry friends. We typically see companies looking at their overarching design style every 2-3 years in more tech/modern industries, and around every 4-6 years in more conservative markets.
  • First impressions – Elise also mentioned how important your web design is as a first impression. Making sure that your overall design and content strategy is connecting your brand experience with your customer relationships. This also rings true for hiring great talent as well.

Content Strategy

Does your website tell the narrative of your brand? How well do you send people down the buyer’s journey? Here are some key content-related items we discussed:

  • Design + Content = Engagement – Synergy, yes, synergy, between great content and a great web design is how you get the most engagement on your site. The ultimate result is more conversions and leads for your sales team.
  • Buyer’s Journey – Your website needs to speak to your prospects at each stage of your buyer’s journey. One way I suggest doing this is to utilize a Content Matrix using your marketing personas.
  • Telling Your Story – As people like to buy from brands they know and trust, telling your company story on your website is important. Aim to have a design and content strategy that showcases who you are, what you do, and who you do it for.

Easy to Edit

With the many hats that marketing people wear nowadays, having tools that make your job easier is a must. Below are some ways to be sure you are making a website that is easy to edit.

  • A Marketing Tool – When designing and developing pages on your new site, Elise brought up that it’s good to think of ways to be dynamic for future marketing campaigns. This can mean developing landing page templates, educational resource libraries, and calls-to-action. With these templates in place, you’ll be able to add/edit/delete marketing content with ease.
  • Picking the Right CMS – Selecting the best CMS (Content Management System) for your web design project is an important decision. There are many common platforms, all with their own pros/cons. At Powderkeg, we use WordPress, and develop a custom theme for our clients. We do not use template themes that come with extra headaches and compatibility issues.

Search Engine Optimization

What good is your website if nobody can find it? Search engine optimization is another big component of web design. Below are a few items we discussed:

  • Keyword Relevancy – In order to have your websites indexed for target keywords, you need to have relevant content placement. This means both the density of keyword usage, but also the placement in the design.
  • Markup and Schema – Good SEO is technical… Making sure that your text has the correct markup and schema allows search engine crawlers to properly identify key content on your website. This is an important consideration in the web development of pages.
  • Site Speed – Load time is a major factor in user experience, which Google uses in its ranking algorithms. A good web design should enable fast page loading, and cut out excess bloats and functions from the code.


Are you thinking about a new website for your organization? Check out our free New Website Planning Guide!