3 Pro Tips to keep in mind when it's time to redesign your website

Re-designing your website is one of the best ways to increase your business. More and more consumers are making the shift online for their first point of contact between them and the companies they do business with. The significance of having a well performing website grows by the day.

So, you need to improve your website. But where do you start? How do you guarantee that you’re going to see the best results for your investment?

There are certainly some do’s and don’t’s to building a website, But here are 3 major tips that will make your website outperform the competition:

1. Base your re-design on data, not branding.

This may seem pretty counter-intuitive coming from us. We’re all about brand identity and pushing your business forward with your brand vision. We’ve been helping businesses improve their brand since the day we opened our doors. But, re-designing your website should be about improving results first, and aesthetics second.

When you’re looking to redesign your website, it should be because you understand that things like an improved web design, optimized content, and friendly mobile usability will increase traffic and draw you more business.

Start by collecting existing data on your websites performance. How do you rank in search engines? How much traffic are you getting now with what you have?

Next, pinpoint areas where you can improve. Where is your current site failing? What are the factors causing you to lose business?

Now, build your site from there, and re-design it with the goal to perform better. Practice measuring traffic and results so you can make changes as you need to. Your website needs to be looked at as an employee, and should never be set and forgotten.

The new paint job is a bonus.

2. Avoid free templates.

There are plenty of templates available online that you can slap your name, logo, and some information on and call it yours. But be weary of the lazy man’s approach.

Free templates are base model website designs that do not showcase the personality of your business. When it comes to creating a recognizable and trustworthy brand, the personality of your business is what you should be showing off the most.

Templates are overused, and have the feeling of something your visitors have seen before. They may get the job done, but in terms of creating amazing user experiences and setting customer expectations, they will almost always fall short.

Besides, you could use your site for selling pizza, and somewhere out there someone could be using the exact same template to sell toenail clippers.

Professionally re-designed websites will capture what makes your business unique. Visitors will appreciate and appeal to something that is unmistakably ‘you’ over something they’ve seen again and again and again.

3. Consider your copy.

You want to redesign your website to drive more traffic to your business, and you want to show all of these new visitors your awesome personality. Now you need to figure out how to actually accomplish these things.

The best proven way to create effective web design is through some kick-ass copywriting.

When people hear ‘copywriting’ they mostly only hear ‘writing’. It seems tedious, and unimportant. The work your business does is what’s important. Right?

However copywriting is all about communication. This is how you communicate why your business is important to visitors, and why they should pay attention.

Your web content – from landing pages to blogs – should add personality, generate interest, and ultimately persuade customers to take action.

There is strategy to creating visually appealing copy. To having not too much, or too little, but just enough to influence visitors to make a decision, whether that is buying something, following you, or visiting your store in person.

Re-designing a website is never something you should do just because you think you need a face-lift. While a new look is great, your business deserves to have a properly functioning site that shows off who you are, and delivers results. The potential uptick in business a well designed site has is hard to ignore, and there’s data to prove it.