Website Design – Re-designing A Website

Website Design can make or break a website.  Just as brick-n-mortar stores change the layout of their stores (Wal-Mart is a good example) to make it look like they have new items to sell, websites need to change their layout to keep up with the trends.  So many companies will put up a website and think, “It’s there, they will come” and never do anything further with them.  Once a website has been published the company needs to start looking at re-evaluating the site.  They have to think of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), getting customers to their site; get them to purchase, and constantly returning.

It used to be that trends in web design changed over several years.  As new technology is discovered or the way technology is used, trends change.  Look how FaceBook, MySpace, Twitter and other social marketing sites have changed the way companies do business on the Internet just over the last several years.  Companies have had to take a look at how Social Media Marketing can improve and change the way they do business.  Search Engines Optimization changes several times over a year and keeping up with it is a full time job.

Look how the iPad alone has changed many websites that were Flash driven.  These sites, if they wanted to stay in the game, had to quickly redesign their entire website quickly to be accessible on the iPad.  With the emergence of the smart phones, websites had to be redesigned to be visible on the small screens and still operate with some functionality.

Trends of 2010 are now outdated, Web 2.0 has taken a back seat to the new look and feel of HTML5 and CSS3.  People want more interactive websites opposed to the old static look and feel.  They want to get something more out of their experience on a website than just looking at it and reading the text.  One must look at their website as something that is constantly changing and evolving.

When blogs first came out they were mostly used for people to talk about what was on their minds.  Now they are just as popular as the interactive websites.  Content Management Systems (CMS), like WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal, just to name a few, have become the norm.  The ability for a company (or individual) to be able to update their website at any time, day or night, is in demand.  They want the ability for the posts from their CMS website to update their Social Media accounts.  They are using Social Media to handle their customer service portion of their websites and are being extremely successful.

So, how does one know if their website needs to be redesigned?  Let’s look at some of the things to look for:

1. Outdated Techniques and Technologies – Look at your website.  Does it use technologies or code that is outdated and not being used?  I still see some sites on the Internet using Frames.  Frames have been outdated since the late 90’s or early 2000.  Some people use iFrames when creating advertising, affiliate programs or even in some widgets.  Facebook uses iFrames in their new look for placing tabs for pages.
2. Outdated Content – Not only does current content appease the visitors to one’s website, but it also appeases the search engines.  The content needs to be current and having a static site can make it hard for a company, especially a small company who does not have anyone on staff who can update the site.  With a CMS, it makes it very easy to keep the content current and updated constantly.  Search engine spiders roam the Internet looking at pages.  When they store the information concerning the site and the individual page in their database, they also store the date and time stamp of the last update of the page.  When they go back to spider the site again, the first thing the spider does is look at the date and time stamp.  If it equals what it has in its database, it moves on to the next site.  This makes the search engine think there’s nothing going on with this site and it ranks it lower in the search page results.
3. Introduction Pages – This is my biggest pet peeve.  Intro pages came along back when there were only dial-up connections to the Internet.  The into page was actually a courtesy to the end-user.  If you had a fast dial-up connection they had a link to their “enriched” site with all the bells and whistles of animation.  If you had a slow dial-up connect one had the choice to choose the “static” site.  With fast Internet connections allowed us today with cable connection, fiber optics, and satellite connections, intro pages are a thing of the past.  I have personally seen them used recently for companies who want to keep their “flash” site, but offer a “non-flash” site for those using the iPad and iPhone to connect to it.
4. Flash Websites – Not only is it impossible to pull up a flash site on the iPad and iPhone, it is impossible for the search engine spiders to spider your website.  If one does not care where they rank in the search engines nor do they care if they are missing out on the clients who use the iPad or iPhone to surf the web, then leaving their website built with flash is not an issue.  Unfortunately, they are missing out on a lot of opportunities.   The newer flash sites do use the XML technology not afforded those years ago to deliver content, but they are still missing out on a large portion of the market with this old technology.
5. Websites Designed Using Tables – Originally tables were used mainly for laying out data in a particularly pleasing way on one’s website.  Then designers discovered they were great for laying out a complicated web design.  Designing in tables went out several years ago when it was found that using <div>s and CSS was much easier, less time consuming, and easier to update.  Years ago if a website was laid out using tables and you needed to change the design of the table, each and every page designed with the table had to be updated.  This took a lot of time and company money to achieve.  When using <div>s and CSS, all one has to do is update the CSS file and it updates every page on the website instantly.
6. Design Tends – Yeas ago flashing, blinking graphics were the way to go.  They were supposed to get the attention of the user.  They have become and eye sore to most users now days.  Designers now look at the overall layout and design of the website.  Is it pleasing to the eyes?  Are the colors soothing or are they screaming at the user?  Is there too much white space?  Are the design elements evenly balanced on each page of the site?  Is the content overwhelming to the visitors?  Some design trends work well for one company, but not necessarily for another.  One must stop and think what is the target audience and how can the website attract them and keep them returning?
7. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – What can I say, SEO is one of the most needed things a website needs and it needs it constantly.  It’s not a onetime thing; it has to be maintained constantly.  It is one of the most important things done to/for a website.  Google is the worst about changing their algorithm several times a year and one’s website has to change with it.  People who do not understand how the SEO works, especially how a spider crawls a website have a difficult time understanding the importance of how to code the pages.  When a spider starts at the top of the page and works its way down the page, if there is too much data for it to consume, it just leaves and never finishes with the page.  I have seen sites where code (large chunks of code) has been commented out and just left there.  Each line the spider has to read takes up valuable time, and yes, code that has been commented out is read by the spiders.  This could mean that the spider did not have the opportunity to read the entire page and this will cost on the rankings of the page.  Table based web design creates so much extra code for the spiders to read and is one of the reasons it is out dated.  If the website is built using tables, it is time for a re-design.  One thing designers use to not take advantage of and it helps in SEO is using the “alt” tags in images.
8. Website Analytics – Being able to look at how one’s website is performing, what pages are being accessed more than others, what the conversion rate is, what the bounce rate is, what keywords are being used to find the website, and where the traffic is coming from is of vital importance to a company.  Google has one of the best analytic reporting processes on the Internet, and it’s free!  By tracking how the website is performing one can decide if there are particular pages that need to be looked at for a re-design or for fresh content.
9. Competition – What is the competition doing?  Have they just re-designed their website?  If so, why did they do a re-design?  Did they add new features?  Are they taking advantage of newer technology which makes their site more user friendly?

10. Does The Site Succeed At What It Was Designed To Succeed At? – When the website was originally design, there was a specific purpose for the site?  Does the website do what it was originally intended to do?  Is it successful at accomplishing what it was designed to do?  Have any of the demographics changed or has the audience changed?  Does the website meet the current accessibility guidelines from the W3C and ADA?  Have so many pages been added that even the designers get lost?

Why does/How does one plan for a re-design of a website?  The decision has been made that the company website needs a new look and feel.  This is the first step in the process of re-designing the website.  When one makes this decision, there is a lot of planning which needs to be done for the re-design to be successful.  Here are some things to think about.

1. What Works and What Does Not Work – Take a very close look at the current website and write down what works on the site and what does not work on the site.  Look at the competition.  What are they doing that seems to be successful and implement it into the re-design of the website.  Look at the current website from a users’ perspective.  What can be done to enhance the user experience to keep them coming back and referring the website?  The analytics reports is a great place to start looking at the website to find out what is and what is not working.
2. What to Do With the Current Pages? – Most websites nowadays has a site map.  This can be very useful when deciding how the site is working.  Print out the site map.  If there is no site map then write down the name of each page.  Use this information to look over the site, decide which pages are working and which are not working.  Can the pages not working be combined with other pages that are working?  Do they just need to be deleted because they no longer serve a purpose?  Are there pages needed that are not currently present on the website?
3. Where Are The Visitors Coming From? – Here again, the analytics report is vital to finding out where the visitors are coming from.  Did they arrive on the site from a referring website?  Did they arrive on the site from a search engine, if so what keywords were used?  Did they arrive as a direct entry of the URL?  After determining how the visitors get to the website one needs to find out where they went once they got there.  Did they immediately leave the site (bounce rate) or did they investigate several pages (and which pages)?  How long did the visitors stay on the website?  Did they order anything?  Did they sign up for a newsletter?  What exactly do the visitors do when they reach your website is most important to deciding what pages are most important to the visitors.
4. Graphics – Does the website need an image gallery or more images on each individual page?  If it is determined an image gallery is needed a decision has to be made of how the gallery will be built and what code it will be written in.  Is it overwhelmed with graphics that seem to take away from the content?  Are the graphics appeasing to the visitor or are do they take away from meaning of the page?  Are the graphics too large and seem to take over the page?  Are the graphics optimized for the web?  In this day and time people love to take pictures and upload them to their blogs/websites from their cameras and phones.  These graphics have not been optimized for web browsing.  Graphics which are displayed over the Internet need to be optimized at 72dpi.  Most cameras and phones take pictures form 150 – 300dpi.  This is print optimization not web optimization.  Are the graphics on the current site outdated?  Does new graphics need to be created for the website?  Should rotating images be used?  If yes, where and what images?  What pages get what images?  Has the company’s image changed?  If so, one would want to portray this to the visitors in the graphics.
5. Blog - Does the website need to add a blog for people to read about the latest happenings at the company?  Does this blog need to be connected to all their Social Media sites so when a post is made to the blog that it automatically takes the post and sends it to all the social media sites associated with it?  If the decision a blog is needed, who will keep it updated?  What content will be put on it?  What CMS will be used to build the blog?
6. Screen Resolution/Size – This is a very important area to research.  Years ago there was only one or two monitor sizes so it was very easy to decide what screen size the site should be optimized for.  Now people are accessing the Internet on screens as small as their phone to screens as large as 152-inch TVs.  How does one decide how to optimize for all screen sizes?  This is very important since one does not want their visitors having to scroll horizontally to see their entire website.
7. Connection Speed – Years ago connection speed was one of the main concerns when building a website.  It can still be a concern when you think of regions where people still have only one way to connect to the Internet and that is through dial-up.  Yes, there are still remote areas in the U.S. where dial-up is still the only option a person has to access the Internet.  A decision has to be made whether connection speed is one of the issues of how the site is designed/re-designed.  Analytic reports for current sites can tell one what browsers are being used and what type of Internet connection the visitors are using to access the website.  This is vital data needed to make decisions when re-designing a website.
8. Browser Design – The most common browsers used today are Google Chrome (Chrome), FireFox (FF), Internet Explorer (IE), and Safari.  Which one(s) should the website be designed for?  One, two, or all?  The answer is all of them.   When designing a website it should be tested in all four of these browsers.  Until all browsers are forced to comply with the same rules to where you can focus on just one browser when designing, it is detrimental that all four are tested.  People who own MACs do not have IE on their computer and most use Safari.  People who own PCs do not usually have Safari, they use IE.
9. Social Media Marketing – FaceBook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn, and the list goes on and on.  These are the most popular social media sites being used today.  Google + is slowly taking hold, but is not geared toward the business as much as the others are.  People want to be connected and stay connected.  A decision has to be made as to which social media outlets will be used and how they will be used in connection with the website.  How will the website interact with the social media sites?  Some companies are now using FaceBook as their only means of customer service.  They have opted into an “interactive” customer service where they want and need the interaction of their visitors to help improve on their current business and bring new visitors to it.  The easiest way to become popular as a website is to have your customers “like” and “recommend” the company’s website to “all” their friends.

10. Target Market – Determining a website’s target market is vital to the design/re-design of the website.  This is the group of visitors the company wants visiting the site.  Identifying and describing the target market needs to be determined before the design/re-design of the website is even considered.  This is normally what the site is designed around.  This is part of their Internet Marketing plan and it has a major effect of the ROI (return on investment) of the company.  When determining the target market the following things should be considered in the psychographic and demographic profile:

1. The age group being sought after.
2. Is the website gender specific?
3. Does the website want a specific ethnic background or nationality?
4. Does the website care about the marital status of the visitor?
5. Is there a particular location (city, state, or nation) the website is targeting?
6. What is the social group of the visitor?
7. What is the professional group the site is looking to target?
8. Is there a particular education level the site is targeting?
9. Is there a particular income level the site is targeting?
10. Is the site targeting hobbies, sports, gamers, etc.?

11. Complete or Partial Re-Design? – A good look at the entire website will help determine if a complete makeover is needed, if only particular pages need a re-design, if new pages need to be added, or if the look and feel needs to be overhauled.  If the website was built using a CMS it may just need a new theme.  It may be the company has changed their logo and the logo on the website just needs changing.

The pitfalls of a website re-design.  Most people do not stop to think what a website re-design can do to the site’s ranking on the search engines and to the visitors who been longtime visitors on the site.  Let’s look at few scenarios.

1. In this example let’s use WordPress.  When the WordPress site was first created the owner did not use “pretty permalinks”.  The default page creation of WordPress is like “http://www.yoursitename.com/?p=xx”.  The “?p=xx” (where “xx” is the number assigned to a particular page) is not search engine friendly.  With “pretty permalinks” WordPress takes the page title and creates the name of the page.  If the page title is “Search Engine Optimization” then the link to that particular page would look like “http://www.yoursitename.com/search-engine-optimization”.  Search engines love this type of page naming structure since they love to take the name of the page and using it as part of keyword linking.  If the site was original built “not” using pretty permalinks and then a decision to use them is made, it is like starting all over again with the search engine optimization since none of the new page names exist in the search engines and all of the old page names have disappeared leaving visitors with the dreaded 404 Page Can Not Be Found error which makes the site look bad in the eyes of the visitors.  Properly using 301 redirects (which are permanent) helps not only the site visitors to learn the new structure and not feel like the site is broken, but it also helps the search engines learn the new site structure and not penalized the site.  Setting up redirects on an Apache server is a piece of cake by modifying the “.htaccess” file (Windows servers are a little harder).
2. There are a lot of people who do not like change, especially major changes.  It might be beneficial to the company to announce to their visitors that a new “look and feel” is in the works.  Some companies are very successful in creating a “temp” site where they can direct their current customers to get a “peek” look at the new look and feel.  This can be beneficial in two ways: (1) it gives the user the ability to look over the new re-design of the site and get accustomed to it, and (2) the company can actually use this as an area where they ask the user to leave feedback about the new look and feel of the website and get their valuable input prior to the site going live.  A lot of companies have found this to be very beneficial to the success of their new re-designed website.

Deciding whether to re-design a website can get complicated.  The owner of the website must decide about how to handle existing links to things like login areas, the complexity of the current website, and finding a designer who is seasoned in website re-designs.  Re-designs are not as simple as building a “new” website.  Re-designing a website is very time consuming for not only the owner, but the designers and can affect the company’s ROI.  Both the front-end and back-end of the website needs to be considered in a re-design.  Why does the website need a re-design?  Is it because it is so out dated that it really needs to be re-designed to take advantage of the latest technology?  Is it because the company has taken on a new “look and feel” and the website needs to be updated to reflect this?  Has the website outgrown the current hosting provider and needs to be moved to a new hosting provider where the company can take advantage of the latest technologies?  These are some of the most important things a company needs to look at when deciding to re-design their current website.