Website redesign: the complete guide

Today more than ever, having a website is essential for the majority of businesses. Since 2020, e-commerce has experienced unprecedented growth, driven by the pandemic and successive lockdowns. Taking care of your online presence is therefore more essential than ever for your business. What if it was an opportunity to redesign your website?

Why do a website redesign?

Your website is the digital showcase of your brand. Whether you are an e-commerce site, an agency, whether you offer services or other, your website must reflect your business. It must therefore be constantly updated, whether in terms of content, in terms of appearance and design, or in terms of technique.

The different ways to redesign a website

To redesign your site, you can use several methods. If budget is a problem for you, discover our solutions to create a cheap website. For example, you can redesign your site yourself. But that's assuming you already have site building skills. If you don't have one, you have two options left: hire someone in-house or use a service provider.

Hiring someone is only relevant if you have a long-term need. Otherwise, using a service provider specializing in the creation and redesign of websites is the most viable solution. This provider can be a freelancer or an agency. Freelancing is generally cheaper, but has fewer resources than a structured agency. At Scroll, we offer you the best of both worlds: our agency is also a collective of freelancers. We are therefore able to offer you a range of services at the best price to support you in your redesign project.

Website redesign: the key elements to keep in mind

When you embark on the project of redesigning your website, you need to have several elements in mind. You must be able to answer each of these questions, in order to be able to make your project a reality in the best possible way. If you can't do it, however, don't panic: the agencies are there to guide you and help you in your choices.

What will be the design of your new site?

The design of your website is essential. It must reflect your values and be ergonomic so that its use is facilitated for your users. The logo, the choice of colors, fonts, layout... Real thought needs to be done at this level!

What will be the acquisition levers that you will activate?

How will users find your site? Thinking about the acquisition levers for your new website is again essential. If you want to bet on natural or paid referencing, you will need to create landing pages corresponding to certain keywords or research.

How will the customer journey on the site be constituted?

Your customer journey also requires reflection. Depending on the products or services you offer, it can be more or less complex, but your task is to always make it clear and accessible for your users.

What features will your site offer?

Many websites include more or less advanced features. Contact forms, web applications, e-commerce section... All these functionalities require development, and you must therefore choose the ones that will be relevant for your online business.

What will be the technical bases of your new site?

Finally, the question of technique is crucial. What CMS should I use? Wordpress, Webflow, Drupal, Shopify... Depending on the goals of your website redesign, not all CMS are necessarily the same. At Scroll, we are a fan of Webflow: the no-code CMS indeed allows you to take particular care of the design of your site, to personalize it down to the smallest detail, all in record time and without sacrificing performance-.

Website redesign: the key steps

When you want to redesign your website, whether it is a showcase site, an e-commerce site or a simple blog, you will have to go through several essential steps. So discover the 9 steps to redesign your website.

Think about your goal

The first step is to ask yourself why you want to redesign your website. Capture more leads? Making it more technically efficient? Do a graphic redesign? All goals are valid, but your website will be different depending on what you want to achieve.

Establishing redesign specifications

The specifications for redesigning your website must be as comprehensive as possible. It will help you formalize your project, but also guide the agency you will work with. A specification must include:

• Presentation of the project and the company
• Indication of the objective of the redesign
• Description of your graphic charter or, if you do not have one, collect graphic elements at your disposal: inspirations, captures of the current site, etc.
• Description of expected features
• Description of expected technical capabilities
• Mention of all the services required: technical maintenance, referencing, content creation...

The more complete and exhaustive your specifications are, the more your partner agency will be in a position to support you and offer you a project that meets your expectations. The proposed quotation will also be all the more precise.

Create your tree

Creating the tree structure for your new site is a key element in your redesign. The tree structure will in fact have an impact on your SEO, your advertising, your customer journey, on the page models to be created, the content to be created... in short: the tree structure of your site will have an impact on all the rest of the redesign!

It is therefore a crucial step for any website redesign.

Create your graphic charter

The graphic charter is the look and feel of your website. A site redesign is an opportunity to review this charter, to update and update it. A graphic charter should contain:

• A logo
• The fonts used for your texts
• The color palette that is found on your pages

As we have seen, the design of your site is an element that should not be overlooked. It gives users confidence, it allows them to recognize your brand. To help you define your graphic charter, at Scroll, we called on brilliant designers!

Create your mockups

Once you have your tree structure and your graphic chart, you now need to format your elements. This is the mock-up phase, an essential phase in any website redesign.

To create your models, who better than a UX or UI expert? Its objective: to help you create clear web pages to facilitate the user journey.

You will need to create mockups for all your page types. If you are an e-commerce site, you will therefore need, at a minimum, a home page, category pages, product pages and sales pages, on which your users can enter their payment information. If you want to add a blog, think about the article pages, the article categories, and the home of your blog.

Integration: choosing the right CMS

Once your models are ready, you will need to integrate them. Today, there is no need to hard code your site: many CMS exist, which will meet all your needs. Wordpress is certainly the best known, but others are worth considering: Shopify or Drupal are two examples.

At Scroll, we are particularly keen on Webflow. Its editor mode allows us to focus on the design of your site. In addition, the CMS No-code will allow you to have control, at any time, on your content, to modify or adapt it. A simple and elegant solution, suitable for all website redesign projects!

Create pre-production and put the site online

When you tackle the redesign of a website, you create a preproduction environment. In general, it is a subdomain that users and search engines do not have access to. A password may be required to log in.

The aim of preprod is to technically integrate all the pages of your site. It allows you to ensure that your site is viable before its final launch. Once this pre-production is complete, you will have to migrate this new site to your domain name so that users have access to it.

Track the performance of your site

Once your new site is online, measure its performance precisely. Several elements must be taken into account to ensure that the redesign went as well as possible.

• Traffic status: check that your site still has as many users (or more!). You can check this with tools like Google Analytics.
• Your visibility on search engines: was the redesign of your website beneficial or not for your natural referencing? Google Search Console will give you valuable information at this level.
• Your load times. The redesign of a website is also the time to do a technical update. Your new site must therefore be more efficient than the old one. Use PageSpeed Insights to measure page load times.
• Your conversion rate. The goal of your redesign is also to better engage your users, to generate more revenue through your site. Use Analytics to make sure that users are still converting.

Depending on your goals, some elements will be more or less important to take into consideration. It's up to you to think about which ones you think are the most relevant!

Scroll, site creation and redesign agency

Are you looking to redesign your website? Scroll is there to support you. Thanks to our team, made up of freelancers from diverse backgrounds, we are able to support you throughout your project, from its conception to its launch online. Do not hesitate to contact us to find out more!

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