You’ll naturally want to conquer all of your competitors and generate serious sales and revenue with your revamped business website. But are you at risk of being attracted to gimmicks for your new site, while neglecting the foundations of a successful site?
Some of the below must-not-make errors may seem ‘obvious’, but they can also be committed surprisingly often by those overseeing a redesign of their company website.
- Neglect mobile friendliness
It’s hard to believe that some small firms still think mobile friendliness ‘doesn’t really matter’, or that they can ‘get away with’ not paying much attention to it.
In particular, it’s important to consider how people are likely to use your site. If your business is a restaurant, for example, can the likes of opening hours, menu information, directions and contact details be easily accessed and used even by those ‘on the go’?
- Pay zero attention to what already works with your site
You’ve probably heard of the saying, “if you don’t know where you’ve been and you don’t know where you are now, you won’t know where you’re going.”
It’s certainly pressingly relevant when you’re planning a website redesign. Are you aware of what your site’s current bounce rates look like, for example? What kind of leads are you getting from your services pages, and is your ‘meet the team’ page having any real effect at all?
Knowing the answers to questions like these will enable you to be so much more targeted with your website redesign. That way, you’ll minimise your chances of ploughing money into changes to your site that could bring inferior traffic and sales to what your existing site is already giving you.
- Ignore your industry rivals
We touched above on the matter of your competition – but are you actually paying attention to your competitors? Beyond just glancing at one or two sites, it’s well worth observing the broader recent trends in your sector, and considering what implications they could have for your site redesign.
Remember that taking your firm’s obvious online rivals into account isn’t necessarily about slavishly copying what they might have done. It’s about a general awareness of what’s going on in your industry, so that you can pick up tips and tricks as to what to incorporate into your site redesign, and what might not be so important.
- Obsessively focus on you, you and you
You might be proud of your company’s experiences and achievements, and eager to reflect them in your overhauled website’s design and content, but it’s crucial not to just boast for the sake of it. Indeed, you won’t want to come across as ‘boasting’ at all.
That’s because, when it comes down to it, any small firm’s website is only redesigned to bring in more business. You’ll therefore want your site to be focused on your customers’ pain points, and how your products and services can address those pain points to make their lives easier.
In other words, you won’t want to give the impression of your brand being self-obsessed – because learning you’re self-obsessed is the last thing prospective customers will want when they land onto your redesigned site for the first time.
- Forget about incorporating conversion opportunities
When we refer to ‘conversion opportunities’, we’re talking about all of the chances you have on your site to move the potential customer one step further along the buyer journey.
A conversion opportunity might take the form of a ‘call to action’ (CTA) that instructs the visitor to email or call you for a quote, or to sign up an account to get a discount. Well-placed links to further information about certain relevant products or services, and even chatbots, can also play a role in moving a given customer closer to purchasing or becoming more involved with your brand.
A good website redesign will therefore feature clear steps or pathways that visitors can take if they are interested in what you have to offer. In short, conversion – and conversion rate optimisation (CRO) – needs to be central to your mindset when you’re redesigning your website.
Would you like to take the next crucial step to ensuring your own website redesign achieves the results you aspire to for your brand? If so, it couldn’t be easier to contact the WebAhead Internet team today about our various acclaimed website design packages.
