1. Establish Your Goals
Establish your goals for redesigning your website. Do you need to improve your conversion rates? Are you just updating your branding, or are you looking to add new features and grow your website further Identifying your goals will help you and your web designer plan effectively.
2. Audit the Current Website
Audit the current website. See what is working well and what is not. Discuss with your web designer about which changes are necessary, as this process can take time. Allow time to review what other websites are doing well or noting any features to consider when planning the new site. Maybe there are key pages missing that all the competitors in your industry have but are absent from your current site. Make a list of these differences and figure out if these items need to be built into the new website.
3. Gather Feedback
Get feedback from current visitors of your website and talk to others in the same or similar industry to see what you may be missing.
4. SEO Considerations
If you already have Google Analytics and Search Console set up, then you have to look at your data! Check your top pages, for example, and when building out the new site, do not lose what makes those pages great. The best way to lose your rankings and website visitors is to remove the things that are getting people on your site and keeping it visible. Ideally, you want to keep the same content and heading titles at least.
Of course, if you are no longer offering a service that currently ranks, then you need to take that into consideration. Look at ways to redirect those visitors to your new similar service or be okay with letting that go.
5. Content and Images
Do you have new content or images? It would be great to have these gathered before starting your website redesign. Set up a folder and document that has all the pages with headings and content already written and revised so you don’t have to worry about it. Another option is to hire a website copywriter to get this off your plate and done for you.
Also, decide which images to keep or replace. You don’t want to tank your ratings by deleting everything without redirects or knowing what is happening willy-nilly. Everything needs to be planned out with thought and based on your data. If you have never set up Search Console or Analytics before, then you may have a harder time figuring this out on your own.
6. Technical Considerations
Once you have gathered your content, SEO data, and feedback, begin planning the new site structure. Open a Google Doc and start listing all the links you have along with the new link structure to keep organized.