website redesign

4 Common Pitfalls of Website Redesign Projects

Website redesign projects can provide excellent improvements to your online presence. But watch out for these common pitfalls impacting your final product.

Website redesign projects provide a great opportunity to find new ways to connect with customers. Yet, many organizations fall into 4 common pitfalls that limit the impact that website redesign projects have on their organization.

These projects are not all about updating your website navigation and design. It’s also an opportunity to focus more on lead generation and lead conversion to better communicate to your customers the value that you provide and the reason they should choose you. 

Websites that focus on the customer and their needs are the ones that tend to have the best results. So to ensure you get the most out of your website redesign project, here are the common pitfalls that limit the impact a new website can have on your organization.

1. Website Redesign Project Goals Lack an Analytics and KPI Focus

Before you embark on a website redesign project, you should sit down and do some goal setting. Yes, you want it to look better and function based on modern standards. But if those are your only goals, you’re likely missing out on some crucial aspects you should be focused on, including analytics and KPIs.

website redesign

To fix this pitfall, take some time to build out what you hope to gain from your website. Evaluate existing analytics and conversion rates to find areas of improvement. Compare your results to industry standards to guide your goal setting. 

Make 30, 60 and 90-day goals for your new website. That way, you’ll know how well you’re doing at accomplishing these goals as you start working with your new website. 

Your goals should be above and beyond what you’re currently seeing with your website. Some common goals include the following. 

  • Increase the number of keywords you’re ranking for on page one of search results
  • Get more traffic to your website
  • Improve your conversion rate
  • Add crucial pages that are currently missing from your sitemap
  • Decrease your website’s bounce rate

2. Focus Your Project on Features and Content to Add

When you focus on the features you believe are missing from your website and think about the content you want to write for your new website, you leave out a crucial step. Before considering what content is missing and what features you’d like to add, you need to first think about your customer.

A customer-centric approach to your website means starting with what your customers need and tailoring your website to meet those needs. Don’t skip this crucial step of doing your research and learning more about your target audience.

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3. Your Project Plan Lacks SEO Tasks

Launching a new website will have a huge impact on your search engine rankings. There are several steps you can take to limit those impacts, but companies often forget to engage in these important steps. 

You’ve already put some equity into building a search presence. Even if you aren’t ranking as well as you’d like and one of your big goals for your website redesign project is to fix that, you have to focus on preserving what you’ve built with your website.

action plan

Understand that maintaining your website’s SEO value is essential no matter how well you’re currently ranking. You could lose as much as 50 percent of your organic traffic if you leave out this step.

Preserving your SEO value takes some expertise. It’s a good idea to look into specialists who understand this part of a website redesign. Our team at New Light Digital always includes that as a task in a project plan.

4. You Plan to Hire a Website Development Firm and Not a Marketing Firm

Standalone website development firms lack a crucial understanding of digital marketing and how your website fits in with a full digital marketing strategy. While a website development firm can complete the redesign, they likely won’t ask you important questions about your overall digital strategy.

That’s the great benefit of hiring a full-service digital marketing firm that can aid you in developing a lead generation, content marketing and online strategy that comes together to make your marketing efforts worthwhile. 

If you’re guilty of these common pitfalls of a website redesign project, contact New Light Digital. We can help you get your project back on track and aid you in goal-setting exercises that ensure the best outcome for your project.

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