Website Redesign

If you want to figure out if it is necessary to revamp your website, ask yourself these questions:

Does your website fulfill its purpose?

Each website should have one or more well established goals. These are some of the most common goals:

• to produce sales
• to get you leads
• to inform clients about your services or products
• to lend your business credibility
• to position you as an expert in your field
• to show people why they they should hire you and not your competitors

If you decide to redesign your website, you should clearly determine how your revamped website will fulfill the goals listed above.

Is your old website mobile friendly?

"79% of people say they’re more likely to revisit and/or share a mobile site if it is easy to use." - ThinkwithGoogle

"More than 1/3 of smartphone users will immediately go to another company’s site or mobile app if they don't get what they need." - ThinkwithGoogle

If your website is not mobile friendly, you are losing more than half of your customers. Your website should be redesigned as soon as possible.

Is your old website slow loading and hard to use? 

You will probably not wait 25 seconds for a website to load, so it is pretty safe to  state that neither will most of your customers. The few that do wait that long will be already frustrated by the time your page finishes loading, thus reducing the chance that they will enter a transaction with you.

There are a lot of expert opinions about the "best things" to do when redesigning your website. 

Now, the absolutely necessary very first step is to forget all about those expert opinions.

Common sense is what kept your business going so far and it is also the fuel that will take it further than ever before.

This is what your newly redesigned website should clearly contain:

• your expertise in your field - such as awards, memberships (Chamber of Commerce, professional associations), certifications & licenses, interviews and press mentions
• social proof - reviews, testimonials, famous organizations/people that use your services
• USP - unique selling proposition - what do you do better than your competitors. It can be something that you consider trivial, such as cleaning the worksite after a job, or setting the correct expectations and educating your clients. Rest assured, even if it sounds trivial to you, there are plenty of people that will prefer to hire you because of it.
• benefits of hiring you - such as fast turnaround, affordable pricing, excellent results, etc
• how your services solve their pain points - e.g. a snow removal company will increase a property's safety and facilitate access to it by plowing the snow and using de-icing products afterwards.
• a very clear way how people can contact you and retain your services - e.g. a contact form/page, call buttons, your business address and business hours, etc

Your redesigned website also needs to perform better than the old one from a technical point of view. Things such as a fast loading speed, schema markup and meta tags (just to name a few) need to be planned and implemented by your web designer.

There is usually a knowledge gap between the web designer and the client. So, it is going to be hard for you to determine if you got all that you were promised unless you become somewhat of an expert yourself. As a rule of thumb, you should choose web design companies that are very transparent in their work and can provide you with some clear explanations when you require them to do so.

However, there are also some areas where you should clearly state your preferences:

• look and feel of the website - provide some examples of websites in your industry that you like
• color scheme - do you have any preferences when it comes to colors used on your new website. Your logo, if you have one that you like is a good starting point
• services listed on your website (determines website structure). Ideally, each service should have its on page
• your service area if you are a service area business
• your main service(s) - defined as the service that brings you most profit, that you excel at or your most requested service