How to redesign a website: a guide for small business sites

Redesigns involve making significant changes to a website’s architecture, such as its layout, coding, and visuals. They are a great way to turn things around if your business website has started to lose visitors – which is why most website overhauls tend to focus on improving user experience and functionality.

You might want full control over something as fundamental as your business’s website, particularly if you have a clear vision and a lot of design experience.

But revamping a website is a long and arduous task. You risk wasting resources on a project that takes longer than expected, and ending up with a result you don’t like. Such scenarios could be costly.

To avoid these pitfalls, many small businesses choose to outsource their redesigns. You can easily find the best provider with our handy online web design comparison service. It matches you to quotes from the top website redesign companies quickly, easily, and for zero charge.

Or, if you’d prefer to weigh up your options before deciding on a strategy, the below guide can help. Read on to find out more about the costs, risks, and top tips for redesigning your small business website.

What does it mean to redesign a website?

Website redesign is about changing elements of your website to help grow and scale your business. It can bring you greater volumes of traffic, and more accurate sales leads – if it’s done correctly.

Exactly what alterations you make to your pages are entirely up to you. Redesign is generally about making large-scale edits to your web architecture, such as implementing a completely new layout to help with user navigation.

Generally, these changes will be made in the back-end of your site, and so they will require a certain level of experience with software development or website building.

Website design vs website refresh

The difference between a website redesign and a website refresh is scale. Redesigns are about making complete overhauls that affect your whole site. In comparison, a website refresh tends to be about making minor, surface-level tweaks.

Perhaps you’re unhappy with the images on your site, or you want to add a new logo. These edits would constitute a website refresh, because you’re not really changing anything structurally about your site.

When and why should you redesign a website?

Businesses should reconstruct a website if it:

• Suffers a drop in traffic
• Is not scalable
• Is missing key functionality
• Offers poor user experience
• Needs to reflect a business rebrand
• Needs to reflect changes to the business model

But the decision to redesign a website should not be taken lightly. It requires a lot of work, which may or may not be worth it depending on your specific marketing goals.

Thanks to our more than twenty years of experience working with small businesses, we know that using a website redesign company is the best way to achieve a high-quality and enhanced web page.

Our experts have therefore designed a custom service comparison tool that matches your business with personalised website designer quotes. It only takes a minute to complete, so why not get started below?

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How often should you consider a website redesign?

There’s no hard rule for when you should redesign a website, but a good guiding principle is to aim for every two to four years.

Don’t feel there always has to be an issue to fix – the internet is constantly shifting. In the last 10 years alone, users have started accessing websites on the go, and expecting greater ecommerce functionality to boot.

Just like the fashion industry, website design trends come and go as user expectations change and businesses grow and evolve.

2. Take note of your current website performance

You already know that your current website isn’t up to scratch – now you need to know why.

Evaluate your current site to identify the pinch points. Where do you lose users? What doesn’t work? Answering these questions will help you decide what to modify.

It’s not just about the negatives, however. You should also take note of the volume of traffic to your pages. Look at how long visitors spend on your website, and how many sales you generate. Record an inventory of your content and marketing statistics.

That way, you can establish whether the changes you make are positive or negative.

3. Come up with a set of website redesign objectives

Once you have the information on your current website performance, you can combine this with your business and marketing strategies to set a clear goal and vision.

At this stage, your objectives won’t constitute a clear brief, but they should lay out your primary purposes for having the site and what you hope it will achieve for your business.

This clear goal and vision will enable you to steer a web developer in the right direction as they work on your new site.

4. Carry out market research

Market research is a smart way of finding out what your website should look like, as well as how it should function, by taking a quick look around the internet at competitor sites.

Don’t be tempted to rush the process, however. It takes a skilled eye and a bit of detective work to establish exactly why a competitor places ahead of you in search rankings, gets more conversions, or looks more aesthetically pleasing.

Think as well about your customers – what their persona is, and what they would want from your website that you’re not currently providing.

Any research project is worth doing properly. Remember to set clear deadlines from the beginning, so you have a clear idea of timing for everyone to work to.

5. Create a mock-up of your new website

This stage is all about marrying looks and functionality. Start by creating some digital mock-ups. Usually these pages aren’t interactive and are more like a screenshot, but they help you envision what your site will look like and how it might work.

There should be a fair amount of back-and-forth discussion with your website redesign company at this point. This is the time for them to take your mock-ups and refine their look, before the site is fully developed.

Your designer will then turn your mock-ups into beautiful designs, finalising what your new website will be like once developed and implemented.

6. Redesign your website using a CMS

By this point, you will be ready to redesign your website. Now is a good opportunity to look at your content management system (CMS) to evaluate its performance.

Whether you’re a novice digital marketer or a master web developer, a good CMS will be easy for you to use, and will enable you to make effective changes to your website. If your CMS is proving too complex, or is unable to carry out tasks you need completed, swap it for a simpler system that has the features you require.

Your website redesign company will be able to advise on what the best CMS is for them to manage and maintain your site with in the future.

Popular and easy-to-use CRM systems include:

• WordPress
• Joomla
• Drupal
• HubSpot CMS

7. Test your redesigned website

The aim of testing is to identify and fix any problems in the website before it goes live. This is a crucial stage, as you don’t want your new website to cause any problems for your users – or your business.

There are several different elements of the website that should be tested at this stage. They include:

• Security
• Functionality
• User experience
• Responsiveness
• Mobile-friendliness
• Performance speed

Need help finding a web designer?

Startups matched 500+ readers with a suitable web design service in 2021 thanks to our free comparison tool