Time for a Website Redesign? Better Think, Before You Act.

Many people take on a new challenge or goal at the start of a new year. It could be starting a new exercise program, giving up smoking, or… if you’re in business, redesigning your website.

However, just because it’s a new year, and your last website redesign was 12 months ago, or you’re simply tired of the way the website looks, doesn’t mean you should redesign it. Remember that old saying, “don’t throw the baby out with the bath water”? Well, that applies to websites too!

The only real reasons to redesign your company’s website is if you want to get found by more prospects, convert more prospects into leads and customers, and possibly, for branding purposes, but only IF it drives those first two goals.

A business website should generate leads and drive conversions. So how do you do that?

• Create great content, with a strong call to action
• Optimize that content for search (using SEO)
• Promote that content using social media

If you decide to go ahead with your website redesign, be careful to avoid these pitfalls:

• Removing valuable content
• Losing value of inbound links
• Losing keyword rankings
• Changing good conversion tools

Before you start redesigning, take a look at your current content. Make sure you don’t take away anything that is useful, keyword-rich, and converting visitors into leads.  Take advantage of some web tools that are available such as websitegrader.com from Hubspot. This site will help you evaluate your website for traffic, SEO, social popularity and other technical factors. It also offers advice on how to improve your website from a marketing perspective.

Let’s face it, if you destroy your content and lose keyword rankings all for the sake of a “fresh-looking website,” you’re liable to get a drop in traffic and leads, and that means you’ve wasted a lot of time, effort and money for nothing.