Do us a favor, Google this: how often should a company redesign their website?
That’s right. The answer is every 2-3 years.
If you are the person in charge of your company’s website, fear not! At Toolbox Studios, we are somewhere in the process of redesigning 5-10 websites at any given time. We have the people, expertise, and processes in place to step you through it. And we understand the pain points.
We just redesigned our own website.
What was our pain point? Time. We found ourselves too busy with client projects to focus on ourselves. It’s a common problem, so we addressed it head-on with our own process—which is the same process we implement with all our clients.
- Determine if you need a new website. Ours was 3-4 years old, and we needed to showcase our work in a fresh way.
- Set a timeline. We gave ourselves a launch goal, set weekly meetings, made them a priority, and kept each other accountable. We had to treat ourselves like a client.
- We evaluated our brand, researched the competition, and set goals and objectives for our new website.
- Create a sitemap. This is really about deciding what kind of information to convey. We intentionally wanted to explain our services and also showcase them in real life case studies
- Develop content that fits the goals of the sitemap.
- Develop the design based on the content for each page, while conveying our personality.
- Attain assets. This includes developing the look/feel needed for photos and writing the scripts for videos.
- Build the website on a staging site.
- Optimize everything: pages, graphics, load times, content, meta-tags, snippets, redirects, backlinks, internal links, canonical tag, XML sitemap, robots.txt file, language, page titles, etc.
- It’s important to understand that steps 5-9 are all happening at the same time. As page content is approved, design starts; when design is approved, development starts; as it comes together, we have a better understanding of the assets needed—and photo and video shoots occur. And finally, everything is optimized, and security certifications implemented.
- Take time to test the site for Quality Assurance and User Experience and tweak as necessary.
- Launch (!!)
- Train the team responsible for updating the site.
- Keep it going. We evaluate metrics and write fresh content through our blog and social media.
Questions you need to ask yourself
Before you embark on a website redesign project, ask these questions:
Why do you need a redesign?
Please don’t say, “because we don’t like our current design.” The reasons for updating your site should include:
- Security (you need an SSL certificate)
- Incorporating technology (if your site isn’t mobile responsive, you need to contact us ASAP, because Google no longer even recognizes you.)
- User experience
- Traffic, page ranking, and conversion performance
- Up-to-code with Google requirements
- It isn’t optimized, takes too long to load, no domain authority, etc.
Remember, your website isn’t for you. It’s for your potential customers. Keep them foremost in mind and the process will go a lot smoother.
What do you want to accomplish with your website?
Please don’t say, “more sales.” Let’s just all make the assumption that you want more sales. Your website can accomplish a whole lot more:
- Give industry insights, customer value, and make you a thought-leader
- Arm you with metrics that can inform decision-making
- Reflect your personality, culture, and tell your story
- Become a lead generator for your business development team
- … all of which can result in more sales
Toolbox Studios is offering a FREE analysis of your website, and a downloadable Website Toolkit that gives you specific and actionable items on these key components: Content, Design & UX, Lead Generation, SEO, and Web Security.
Shout Out
We want to personally thank our wonderful photographer, Josh Huskin, who shot our portraits and lifestyle shots. Thanks for capturing the true spirit of Toolbox Studios!
And our go-to video guy, Ken Ashe, for your wonderful spirit and tremendous talent. You make us look and sound better than we actually do! Thanks for putting up with us for so many years!
If Toolbox Studios is privileged to do your website redesign, we will definitely encourage you to work with Josh and Ken for your photo and video needs.
