Redesigning your website is like remodeling your home. There’s a tinge of excitement, nervousness, and anxiety all in one gulp. There are two types of website redesigns. There’s the incremental redesign, where you are only making a few changes to things here and there. And then, there’s the complete redesign, which is what I offer my clients. A complete redesign is where you completely blow out the old website and build something brand new in its place.
In this blog post, I’m going to describe the 7 things you can expect during the website redesign process. I’m going to explain what these things are and how you can handle them. While it may feel like the sky is falling when you go through a website redesign, it really isn’t. And remember, in the end you’re going to have a fully functioning, beautiful, user-friendly website to act as your number one salesperson.
Double Vision
Ok, so you won’t actually have double vision. But you will see double. 9 time out of 10, your web designer is going to build your brand new website on a staging or development environment. Before you begin your redesign or even engage with a website designer, you should check with your website hosting company to ensure they provide a staging environment for you.
If they do not offer this service, your designer may be forced to take your website down for a few weeks to build your new site over top the old one. This is not an ideal situation, but is sometime necessary.
Uneasy Queasy Nervous Feeling
It is super normal to have an uneasy, queasy, nervous feeling when having your website redesigned. I mean, this is your baby. In many cases this is the life line of your business. You can’t afford for anything to go wrong with your website.
To make this process a little more palatable, you should make certain your website designer makes a backup copy of your website before they begin working. This way, God forbid anything go wrong, you will always have a backup copy your can install to return your website to its former glory.
Indecision
Another very common feeling when having your website redesigned is indecision. And this is ok. If you’re working with an experienced web professional, they won’t give you too many choices to make. They should be focusing their efforts on the decisions that will truly move the needle in your business.
Sure, it’s fun (albeit nerve-wrecking) to choose your color scheme and iconography, but those things don’t move the needle in your business. Selecting the Facebook logo in a circle versus a square, has no effect on whether someone buys from you or not. You want to focus on the important decisions and don’t let the unimportant decisions stress you out.
Giddy Excitement
If you feel a sense of giddy excitement at the thought of getting a new website, that’s normal too. In fact, every time I get to design a new website I get giddy, but then again I absolutely love what I do and I get to do this for a living. Can you imagine?!?!
The only caution I’d give is to again, focus on the important things and make quick decisions of the “fun”, “vanity” things, like fonts and icons.
A Dip in Traffic to Your Website
Ok, so here’s the bad news. After a website redesign, you may (and I mean may) see a drop in traffic to your website. This is often due to search engine traffic having to relearn what your website is about. But we’ll talk about that in a second.
The dip you may see in traffic will be a momentary blip and shouldn’t last long at all. Just be sure you’re consistently showing up for your visitors and providing great, useful, informative content that they can use to affect change in their lives.
A Dip in Search Engine Ranking
As I mentioned previously you may see a drop in your search engine ranking. This should be a momentary drop. You would most likely see this if you completed a website content audit and purged your website of poor performing content and created new better targeted content.
So, don’t be alarmed if you see a small dip in your search engine ranking. After the search engines start to visit your site again and get a better understanding of what content you offer and see that you still offer quality content, your rankings will be back to pre-redesign levels in no time.
An Increase in Sales from Your Website
Yes! This is what we’re looking for, right? Yes, you will see an increase in sales from your website. If you’ve done everything correctly, you will see visitors that better fit into your target market. By bringing in more targeted visitors, they will be more apt to purchasing what you’re selling because it’s what they’ve been looking for.
Remember the more targeted and specific the visitor, the higher the likelihood of a sale. Redesigning your website is a huge undertaking, but trust me when I say it is well worth the effort and investment. If you’re interested in having your website redesigned, check out my website redesign services.
