We are often asked to redesign or ’sort out’ underperforming websites. Sometimes it’s because a competitor has taken delivery of a better website, but often it’s because an established website has started to look dated or isn’t performing as it should.

If you’re considering a website redesign, here’s some helpful advice from Roodee Web Design:

Have  A Clear Goal

Whether it’s an online shop, a lead generating site, an online brochure or an information website, establish what your goal is. For example, if you have an ecommerce website, the goal is get a click on the submit button on the payment page. Consider how you are going to take your site’s visitors from the point they entered the site to the goal. 

Our advice: make reaching the goal as easy as possible and strip out any obstacles that get in the way.

Look Current

What looked great a few years ago can quickly look tired, so new visuals are often top of the list when we’re asked to rework a website. Styling a concept begins on paper. See what else is out there; inspiration doesn’t just have to come from other websites.

Our advice: Get your pens out. We do this before we think of firing up Photoshop.

Ditch Splash Intro Pages

These were very fashionable in the 90’s. The majority were animated company logos that whizzed in or jiggled about a bit. They were supposed to give websites a professional and expensive ‘feel’. The truth is they got in the way for users, and they didn’t do well with search engines either.

Our advice: Whip out  the splash and ditch any pointless Flash.

Switch From Table Based Layouts

For a long time websites were built using tables to hold everything in place. These days websites use something else called DIV’s to place elements on pages and are styled with CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). CSS not only gives us far more freedom to come up with visually exciting designs that work in modern browsers, but it means the websites work better with search engines too.

Our advice: Ditch the table layout.

Keep Your Site Up To Date

What’s the point in presenting old, out of date information? It used to be very complicated making websites updateable (and expensive). These days it’s not. Visitors like current content, and search engines do too.

Our advice: Opt for a Content Management System.

See examples of our website redesigns or contact us for a quotation.