Checklist for Website Makeovers

Lorenz

Jun 01 |13:47

web design This blog entry aims to be a checklist to help you all formulate a clear idea about what direction you want to take your new website into:

Step 1: Towards a general look and feel

Determine your House Style

Knowing your House Style is important if you want to have a consistent look across all your marketing channels. Your website will need to reflect your identity on all other marketing materials, so that people can easily recognize your brand.

Gather information on the following:

• Corporate colors – colors set the mood of your site (a pink site says something different than a blue site).

• Corporate font – a font can make you strong and solid or gentle and sophisticated.

• Corporate logo – usually you expect your website to feature your logo in the top left corner.

• Corporate slogan – usually featured close to the slogan

Your graphic designer should have supplied your firm with a ‘Brand Bible’ (or at least an addition to your brand bible in how to handle visual identity) that outlines the above in great detail.

In case you have not been supplied with a bible, ask your graphic designer or marketing department what the house style is.

Determine the goal of the website

The look, navigation and functionality of the site are ultimately driven by what you want to achieve.

Examples of potential goals your website needs to fulfill:

• Offer services to customers

• Attract new customers

• Present a corporate front to the world

• Keep relationships with the press and drive your message

When setting goals, also find out why clients use your site. You will then learn how to meet their goals and make the site more ‘user-friendly’.

Evaluate your existing site

• What do customers like?

• What do they dislike?

• What would they like to see?

• Does the site grab attention? Do important messages grab attention?

Research competitors

• Web design

• Technology

• Communication concepts

• Keywords (SEO related, this topic is discussed later)

Target audience

Who is your typical customer – it is important to know this, as this will have bearing on your communication strategy.

• How do they think?

• What do they need?

• What are they interested in?

Theme look and feel

• What is the mood or emotion you want to communicate?

Step 2: Content

The two keys of content are that it should be easy to find, and speak in a clear and informative language.

Usability

• Is their a search engine on the site? This can help the visitor find the content he needs from any page.

• Can the visitor find what she needs quickly and easily by using the navigation menu?

• Nothing should be more than two clicks away

• Is it obvious that buttons are clickable?

• What links should always be available to the user?

• Is info divided in logical categories?

• Do you utilize cross promotion? When you know that a user might be interested in one of your related services, are you clearly advertising this related service?

• Interaction

• Is it easy for the visitor to exchange information with you?

• Can the visitor find out how orders are processing?

• Can the visitor get questions answered easily?

• Is their a clear and easy ‘contact option’?

• Should your site be more proactive and offer services such as ‘chat with a representative’ or offer a ‘call back’ function?

Press page

Important if you want to help shape the conversation about your brand. Be sure to offer:

• PR articles

• Press kit (could include:)

• Backgrounder with historical information on the company

• Fact Sheet listing specific features, statistics, or benefits

• Biographies of key executives, individuals, artists (Bart Forbes), etc.

• Past Press Coverage

• Photos or other images of key executives, logos, products, etc.

• Media contact information (usually of a PR department or spokesperson)

Graphics and animation

• Do pages load quickly?

• Do graphics load quickly?

• Do the graphics communicate a concept?

Trust and credibility

Why should the visitor trust you?

• Company and site security info

• Office address and registration

• Terms & Conditions

• Privacy page

• Social proof:

• List Awards

• List Guarantees

• List Affiliations

• List Testimonials

• Satisfy personal interests – people connect to people.

• Short bio’s of employees

• Info on founder

• Who’s behind the scenes?

• What do the offices look like?

• Fresh news – it shows that the company is current and ‘happening’.

On-Site Marketing

Design your site with generating leads in mind

Lead Generation

SEO

SEO or Search Engine Optimization ensures that you are found by people performing searches on Google. Make sure your site is optimized for search engines.

Convert visitors to customers through CALLS TO ACTION

Visitors are on your site. What do you want them to do? Usually you want one of two things:

1. Have them contact your sales team. In order to achieve this, every page could prominently offer

• A phone number

• A call back service (at a time of the users preference)

• Possibility to chat with staff straight from the site

• A contact form

2. Or, at the very minimum, you want to capture their contact details so that you can market to them in the future. You can persuade visitors to leave contact details in exchange for:

• Newsletter

• Info on promotions

• Free downloads

• Giveaways

• Contests

• E-course

• Special report

• E-book

• Content that requires to create an account and login first.

Word of mouth promotion

A visitor may land on your site, but not be interested. However, he knows somebody who might be interested. You want to make it as easy as possible for that visitor to inform his friend about you.

Offer where appropriate:

• Tell a friend button (emails the page to a friend)

• Social Bookmarking buttons

Give incentives to subscribe and return visits

• RSS blog

• Newsletter

• Podcast

• Vidcast

I hope this list will help you in making educated decisions about your website design makeover.

Over to you

If you have any questions left, feel free to leave a comment and one of us will be sure to help you. if you want us to contact us in private, you can email us or call us on (214) 302-7631.

If you need practical ideas for your website, feel free to ask your questions in our forum.

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Author of this article: Lorenz

Comments

0 # Goose Control 2010-06-01 23:29

Very good article. We just redid our website and I feel we hit most of this, but this would have been helpful!

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0 # Web Design New York 2010-06-01 23:30

Very well written. I especially like the "tell the friend button". Never thought about putting that on a website. Good idea!

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0 # Jaden 2010-06-02 00:12

what is the best benefit for having website makeovers? i have been doing makeovers for my website every year, is it ok if i do it every year?

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0 # Web Design New York 2010-06-08 10:18

I wouldn't do it every year unless you have a cheap way to do it. That can get very expensive. I always tell my clients to make sure that they are keeping their content up to date, maybe changing a few photos. But an entire new look I wouldn't 100% recommend it. BUt as Lorenz says there is no rule you can really redue your website whenever you want!

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0 # Lorenz 2010-06-02 00:13

There is no set rule of when you need to do a website makeover.

The only reason you might want to consider a makeover is when the look of your website or its technology falls behind the times. In other words, go through the checklist, see what features you are missing and ask yourself: could this grow my business or is this update something my clients want? If the answer is yes, and you have the budget, then do consider a makeover. If the answer is no, you are good as you are.

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0 # Conley 2010-06-02 16:37

that is actually one of my main problem of how to maintain my website every now and then because it’s kind of hassle. but as far as i know, having website makeovers really helps a lot. sometimes i tend to visit some popular sites and gather infos that might help me improve my own site.

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