Rachel Begg
Redesigning your website to meet your user’s needs can be a daunting task when considering all of your options. Keep in mind that your website should be attractive, useful, and answering your visitors needs at every turn. If your site is underperforming, not drawing in leads or not converting, it may be time to make your site redesign project a top priority! So how do you accomplish this?
Check out 3 steps to redesigning your website.
#1 - Evaluate Your Website
Getting an idea of what is working for your site and what is not, should be in your first steps of website redesign process. Developing content strategy that meets your customers where they are in the buyer’s journey is an important key to consider. Evaluating which content is meeting their needs and what may need to be revamped can be achieved a few ways:
- Find opportunities where user’s needs are not being met by the content according to where they are in the buyer’s journey.
- Use interviews and screeners to create groups to test your site’s effectiveness.
- Live test your website to see where issues in usability are.
- Interview the people you work with about the site’s content
Be sure to also consider buying behaviors when creating questions to ask when testing your site. Use these results to refine your content on your site. It is also important to be consistent and test often. Pulling in results to analyze from multiple evaluations will give you greater insight into the overall direction your site will need to be successful.
#2 - Create a Lo-fi prototype
Lo-fi prototypes or wireframes are important when considering the structure of your website. Typically a grossly scaled down version of your site, lo-fi models are useful when establishing the skeleton frame of your site. Tools like balsamiq or even hand drawings are great resources to achieve this model. Void of any graphics or styling, it serves as a base for your website and helps you plan clear and concise content layout. Constructing and testing wireframes helps show the placement of content using boxes and lines. This should be the extent of complexity within this type.
#3 - Create a Hi-fi Prototype
Hi-fi prototypes are the mock ups of your website with clickable and interactive features. Though not the final product of the website, it is a visual representation and speaks to users through the look and feel. Testing at this stage is more refined simply because there is more targeted content and styling of the site. Analyzed data and information from prior versions have culminated to produce this version of your website. Tools like photoshop, omnigraffle and axure are especially helpful when building out this version of your site. As always, keeping in mind the user’s needs when designing a site will ensure that your website is relevant and provides helpful information.
Redesigning your website to improve your user’s experiences takes a lot of time and effort, but when backed by consistent testing and data, it can prove to be a valuable investment. Ready to deep dive more into designing your site to address user’s needs? Download our FREE eBook, 5 Steps To An AWESOME Website ReDesign!
