What is spent on redesigning a website?

A lot goes into redesigning a website. It is not a simple process as it involves numerous steps between deciding whether they want a shiny new website or launching it with a new design. Let us now have a good look at the basics of redesigning a website.

Redesigning a website – what is it?

Redesigning a website means a company is either overhauling it completely, or revamping the website, and updating each thing that required it. It can be from key functionality to the content management system, to the appearance of web pages.

Not every site owner needs to update every single thing on the website if it works quite well. But that is the reason they test the pages periodically. Redesigning a website is more than just a simple refresh, and it can entail updating the Call to action (CTA) button’s shape, changing some pictures or videos in the content and the like. 

In short, it is like fixing both the little things, the medium-sized things, and the big things as well.

The redesign will most likely make the company/website owner conduct auditing, testing, and implementation of large-scale changes across the website. Refreshing the bedroom would involve painting the walls, carpeting, and new furniture.

A large-scale redesign of any room will involve painting the walls fresh, or maybe wallpaper, plus new furniture and probably new flooring. This involves ripping off old carpeting (or pulling out old flooring), ripping off the old wallpaper, scraping off the old paint, adding new temporary lighting, and making a little bench to get the job done.

Foundation is still present but a lot is being done to improve them by quite a margin. 

What is the cost of redesigning a website?

Those who can handle a website redesign on their own, the cost of such ultimately comes down to the value of their time or their team’s time. Yet it can be a lot to manage.

Outsourcing it to a web design agency can range between $3,000 to $55,000. The investment is determined by the project’s scope. Those who have large websites can manage larger budgets.

When should a website be redesigned?

A lot of companies and businesses are redesigning their websites, right? Well not everyone but those who need one are doing so. If the website performs quite well generally and contributes to the business objectives, then they do not need to make any changes. 

They can refresh the website slightly, change the color scheme, update the text, and the like, to boost the performance without making a monumental investment.

The best signal they can get is that they should start carrying out research on website redesign tips which can help many businesses and companies align the redesign with their objectives. For instance, a business ran a couple of tests trying to improve conversion rates across the pages and can see nothing is working.

WHat does this mean? This points to a deeper underlying issue that is not easy to fix.

One key reason why a website should be redesigned is that it is not contributing to a business’s growth. Here are other reasons why a website should be redesigned:

• The website’s design looks quite outdated, or is not able to reflect on the brand.
• The website is not working nicely on mobile devices.
• Companies receive complaints from leads, customers and team members that the website is not working properly.
• The analytics shows that people do not spend a lot of time on the website.
• THe website does not function the way it should.

Now let us have a look at key reasons why websites are redesigned.

Key steps for helping redesign a website

Those who decide to outsource their website’s redesign duties to an external agency instead of doing it in-house, they will most likely be working with a project manager or a design manager who will take them through each step of the process. It is always beneficial to understand how things work.

Now let us see the reasons why websites are redesigned:

Analyzing the existing pages

Site owners should definitely spend some time going through the website’s analytics and taking note of pages that are the best and worst performing. 

No one might want to change everything on web pages that consistently drove conversions, such as contact form submissions, purchases etc. They can even use what works on their top pages to inform how they update the rest of the website. 

Those who wish to have an even deeper look at the way people interact with each element of a web page, they can go for a heatmap tool like Hotjar.

Determining what needs to be accomplished

Depending on what site owners identified in the key areas needing improvement, they can determine their goals. They should remember their target audience at this point. The redesign might feel like it’s just for site owners but it is actually for them. 

What goals that a site owner can set to benefit both the website and the audience? Maybe they want to increase the time spent on the web pages. Based on the analysis carried out, here are some goals to work on:

• What can be done to create a better user experience to help people stay longer?
• Fixing the navigation? 
• Automatic suggestion of related content?
• Updating content faster?

SIte owners must identify how they can accurately communicate their brand and their style while still making a worthwhile experience for the audience.

Mapping out the website’s redesign

Objectives have no meaning without a proper plan for reaching them. Site owners must ask themselves what needs to take place so it can touch their goals, and it should be written down. In fact, each little detail should be looked at.

Let’s rewind a little bit. The objective was to raise the number of pages each user visited. The analysis showed that the main navigation menu needed fixing. THen site owners decide to reorganize the navigation and give its appearance an update. This will then lead to the construction of a new link structure.

Then comes optimizing the redesign. Search engines are key to search for businesses and websites should be redesigned keeping SEO in mind, which will hence save companies a lot of time and money, and will give long-term benefits.

Making a timeline

Deadlines help projects reach completion. No one wants their website redesign efforts to end up becoming a costly and frustrating effort.  An official launch date needs to be set so the audience can see the website, all fresh, new and launched.

THe website’s launch date can be used as a guide and can help break down the process into smaller milestones, with their individual due dates. Deadlines for each major task mapped out should be made.

Creating and reviewing prototypes

No one can ever have a website redesign without having the actual designs. Once the action plan has been made, either the designer team or the site owner will make prototypes of each page.

The site owners might design a new homepage, update the pages, or work on various interactive elements of the site. All the work depends on the objectives and the action items outlined in the initial steps of the process.

Analyzing and tweaking your prototypes until they meet their expectations. No one should be afraid to test out the updates with users before everything is made official.

Building out the website

This step helps bring out all prototypes to life. Once all prototypes have satisfied the web designers in uae and development team, and user testing has been successfully completed, the designs can be prepared for launch. It can require a lot of coding knowledge, and this depends on factors like the content management system in use as well as the complexity of how the website works.

Testing everything

Testing the design with users throughout the process makes sure no potential customer is warded off due to the changes made. To make sure everything works properly, each element should be checked for any bugs and errors so they can be fixed.

Launching the redesigned website

If there are no major elements to fix or any major changes to implement, the redesigned website can now go live.