The reasons for changing your website design vary depending on the specific marketing goals of your business. Most often, sites are redesigned for rebranding, increasing traffic, attracting more leads, and adding features to improve the user experience. When properly aligned with your overall business strategy, a redesign can help you boost conversions, rank higher, and meet the needs of your team and visitors.
If your site is already fast, and also generates leads, then congratulations, because you can leave everything as it is! If not, perhaps our article will help you decide on this important step. In this case, the Jamstack approach to development might help to solve most of the problems.
When is it time to redesign your site?
On average, companies change the design of their websites every three years. Although there is no exact information on this matter, so it is better to focus on your feelings - the site simply ceased to suit you for some reason. Perhaps the site looks unprofessional, poorly designed, or downright ugly. An ugly site will attract fewer visitors and customers, that's understandable. And the design gets outdated pretty quickly, so keep your finger on the pulse. Of course, looks are important, but there are other considerations to keep in mind.
For example, if a website is not attracting leads as fast as it should. Nowadays, every business should get meaningful results from its online presence. If not, you are missing out on sales.
Modern websites are built with easy-to-use Content Management System (CMS) software that makes them easy to maintain. If this is not the case, redesign your site as soon as possible and transfer it to a good CMS. We recommend paying attention to Sanity, Storyblok, Contentful.
Well, and probably the most important thing - your site cannot be found in the search. There are great looking websites created by talented web designers who don't understand the basics of search engine optimization (SEO). The site looks great, but nobody ever sees it because it doesn't show up in Google search results for significant keywords.
Why do I need to redesign the site?
Rebranding
When rebranding, it is important that the entire site has a consistent look and feel. If a visitor clicks on a link on the home page and ends up on a page that looks completely different, they might feel like they've landed on a fake page. Even small differences — for example, different navigation menus on pages — can confuse users.
If your site has grown significantly over the past few years with many additional pages, then it might be time to rethink and implement your brand guidelines and styles so that your site has a consistent design. The design includes a choice of color palette, fonts, button styles, icons, etc.
Driving traffic
However, the great design of your site won't matter if no one sees it. To drive traffic to your site, you need to optimize it for search. A great way to optimize is to make blogging a part of your content strategy. Blogging websites are hundreds of percent more likely to rank high in search engines.
When designing a blog strategy, you need to do keyword research to see what specific words and phrases people use in their search queries, and then include them in their titles, subheadings, body copy, meta descriptions, and URLs.
As more blog posts appear, you can link them to other relevant posts and pages. This will help search engines and visitors understand the value and relationship between content on your site.
If this is your first time building a site on a publishing platform or using a website builder, you may need to upgrade to a CMS with more advanced content management features.
More clients
If you are driving a lot of traffic and want to convert visitors into leads, you need to design your website with a clear conversion strategy in mind.
Your site should tell visitors who you are, what you do, and who your target audience is. This should then convince them to take the next step, which is to become a customer.
If you want to see a similar improvement in conversion rates, check if your current platform supports site-to-CRM or marketing automation software integration. If your CMS does not have such features, it may be worth considering switching to another.
Expansion of functionality
Your website should be easy to use, understandable, and easy to navigate - both for your visitors and your internal marketing team.
As your traffic and team grow, you will likely need to add new features to your site to meet the growing expectations and needs of both visitors and employees. For example, you may need to add chat, multilingual content management, or the ability to run A/B tests right from your dashboard.
Optimization for mobile devices
Mobile devices now account for more than half of the visits from search engines. Accordingly, search engines build user interactions based on the mobile look of the page. Therefore, you need to make sure that your site is optimized for both desktop and mobile.
If you're already using a platform that supports responsive out of the box, such as Webflow, you don't need to worry too much about how your site will look on any device. Of course, customizing the mobile view is still required, but it will be much easier to complete.
Ease of website updating
If you have to call a developer every time you need to add small updates, it's time for a major overhaul. You (or your employees) can do this work yourself, you just need to choose the appropriate CMS. The system should be configured in such a way that it was possible to assemble pages from sections, like a Lego constructor, without the need to write additional code.
Transition to new technologies
Platforms like Joomla or Contribute are no longer properly supported. WordPress, while still doing well, is very outdated. If a few years ago, when ordering a website, you opted for a technology that is no longer relevant, it's time to redo the design.
Full control over the website
A website is an important marketing tool and you should have access to all parts of it so that you can update and expand it. If your web developer controls your site (and you don't), it's time to take control of this vital asset!
How can Jamstack help?
If several points from the previous part are about your site, then it’s probably time to remake it. In this case, a modern approach to development will help to solve most of the problems. It's about Jamstack.
Instead of using a traditional CMS or website builder, Jamstack features three components: JavaScript, API, and content (markup). They are all handled in an isolated architecture with a clear separation between the back-end and the front-end. The main idea behind Jamstack is to shift as much of the load as possible from the server to the client. Thus, it significantly reduces the number of requests sent to the server, greatly reducing the waiting time for a response from the server. This has a good effect on the site in terms of speed, SEO, usability, and security.
Speed
Jamstack sites load incredibly fast due to their static nature. For a generation, SSGs are used, which render a static page on the client side, freeing up the server. Content is stored on a CDN and downloaded from the server closest to the user. Trusted providers like Netlify have almost instant content delivery speeds.
SEO
Compared to their dynamic counterparts, static pages do better when it comes to SEO due to their performance. Faster load times mean better search engine optimization as search engines prioritize pages with faster load times when indexing a site. Having a Jamstack site is also very helpful in meeting the Web Vitals metrics requirements. Jamstack is one of the best technologies currently available for building a fast and SEO-optimized website. By using Jamstack, you can achieve a great level of engagement with your users.
Convenience for the developer
If you are thinking about redesigning your site, you need to think about the developers as well. Due to the "separation of concerns" in the Jamstack between the back-end and the front-end, it is much more convenient to develop sites on it. You can write a frontend using any technology you are used to, and sometimes you don't need a backend at all if you use third-party services through their API. Thus, the quality of the code becomes much better. The development speed is also increasing - up to 30-50%, according to our estimates! The costs are also lower, especially if you hire an experienced team.
Security
The described advantages of Jamstack directly affect the security of websites. A static page simply doesn't have a backend that can be attacked, and hacking a CDN, where the content is hosted, is very difficult, at least from a trusted provider. If you use serverless functions for the backend, an attacker will have a hard time gaining access to them in any case. As a rule, providers of such services quickly close vulnerabilities in their products. In the case of a self-written backend, this does not always happen.
How do you move your website to Jamstack and get all these benefits?
For example, let's say your site is powered by WordPress and you don't want to change the usual workflow of your employees. The good news is that you can leave the WP dashboard for content management, and connect the Gatsby Jamstack framework for the backend. To make the transition, you need to take six huge steps.
- Step one. Set up WordPress.
- Step two. Connect the WP GraphQL plugin on the WordPress side.
- Step three. Connect the gatsby-source-wordpress plugin on the Gatsby side.
- Step four. Create your application or website.
- Step five. Get data as usual, but using GraphQL queries.
- Step six. Set up deployment to Netlify or another hosting platform.
Your WordPress site now uses Jamstack via Gatsby.
Of course, this migration is not always easy and can take several months, especially if you have an old corporate portal with many subpages. The plus is that it happens gradually, and you do not need to shut down the old site. When the transition is complete, the new site is linked to the domain and immediately starts working for you.
Our blog has more detailed instructions on how to make this transition. If you are still confused, contact us, we will help.
Conclusion
As you can see, if you decide to redesign a website, there is a lot to keep in mind. You need to make a decision about the appearance of your brand, choose a popular technology stack that will be supported in a few years. Of course, a website should generate customers and revenue - be sure to make it SEO friendly. Do not forget about the convenience for employees who will work with the site - you need to choose a good CMS. Take a closer look at the Jamstack - many of the requirements for a modern website are met by this modern approach.
Remember that website redesign can significantly increase conversions and sales if done correctly. So take your time and set aside the budget and time for this. The investment will pay off.