Want to Revamp Your Website Design? Implement 6 Best Practices

We agree that your existing website has helped you come a long way, but don’t you think it’s time to take a fresh look at it? As business website design trends are constantly changing, the best practices from ten years ago are no more relevant. Hence, the most pertinent question to ask at this point – is your website in sync with the current trends, developments, and customer expectations?

To survive in this fiercely competitive marketplace, you have no choice but to keep up with the trends and apply the best website design practices. So, instead of being emotionally invested, you should take an objective view of your current website and identify the room for improvement. And to save you from the hassle of digging deeper into research, we bring some of the best website redesign practices worth implementing. Here we go…

Analyse the Website Performance – Which of your webpages are performing well and delivering the right results? Do your research and check the key performance metrics before making alterations to your webpages. If they drive enough visitors and boast a high average session duration, you may want to stick to minimal design changes because drastic modifications can disrupt consistent results.

Using analytical tools like Google Analytics, Screaming Frog, Moz, and Ahref, the experts can measure the performance of each web page based on metrics like bounce rate, search queries, signup/leads, device performance and conversion rate.

Likewise, you will also be able to identify the poor performing pages and take actions that can improve their performance. For example, if your home page has a high bounce rate, you can check if implementing the website design practices help improve customer retentions and deliver the desired result. So, no matter which page it is, check the key metrics, analyse the scope of improvement, and implement the right practices.

Mobile Optimisation – We don’t want to intimidate you but not having a responsive website design is worrisome indeed. With 4.28 billion people accessing the internet through their smartphones, mobile responsiveness can make or break the UX of your website (statista.com). Without a responsive web design, you are less likely to reach more audience and more likely to experience a higher bounce rate.

But as the saying goes being late is better than never, you can do the needful and optimise your website for mobile in 2021. To begin with, you may talk to the experts who can run a test to check the mobile-friendliness of your site and see how well it performs currently. Based on the analysis, they may take necessary steps like switching to a responsive theme, compress images, redesign pop-ups, and so on.

Simple Navigation – According to a survey by Clutch, 94% of customers prefer easy and simple navigation on a website (smallbiztrends.com). Simply put, when people are visiting your website, they want to complete actions or find information in the quickest time possible. Hence, you should plan the order of navigation menu strategically, thereby steering visitors to specific destinations.

For example, mega menus are a viable design choice for site navigation as they accommodate a large number of menu items and eliminate the need for scrolling. Added to that, you should try keeping the drop-down menu to the minimal, and thus help website visitors find what they are looking for easily. Also, you can improve website’s UX by adding sticky navigation in which the menu bar remains on the top even when the visitors have scrolled down to the bottom of the page.

When it comes to mobile-friendly navigation, its importance is self-explanatory in this age of smartphones. Accordingly, the designers incorporate the hamburger menu design to ensure easy navigation by the users on their mobiles. However, located at the top of the screen, the hamburger menu is hard to reach and may hurt the website UX to some extent. Since one design might not work for every website, you can try alternatives like tabbed menus, labelled menu button, and slide-out tabs for mobile navigation.

Can’t decide which option to add to your website redesign checklist? You can talk to the experts of the website design company and prepare an action plan. Worried if it’s going to be expensive? That depends on a number of factors.

Content-first Approach – Fancy designs, attractive colours, and responsive layouts are all important, but it is still words that can convey your brand message to the audience. Hence, you should not trivialize the website content as an entity that’s separate from your website design. Although the standard practice is to decide the colour, layout, and fonts before documenting the content, it should be the other way around.

In the words of Jeffrey Zeldman, a famous American web designer, entrepreneur, and author “Content precedes design. Design in the absence of content is not design, it’s decoration (Zeldman.com). Figuring out the content first can aid in storytelling through the website and help you map design and visual elements systematically. That way, you can prioritise the space for graphics and remove the redundant UI elements without compromising the content quality. In short, designing your website around the content will allow you to deliver value to visitors.

Search Engine Optimization– Today, business websites are optimized for search engines to drive more traffic and generate quality leads. Your website is not exactly incomplete without SEO per se, but it can help enhance the site’s visibility on the SERPs in the long run. To get started with SEO for your website can be confusing and overwhelming, so it’s better you contact a digital agency and get simultaneous help from the developers and SEO experts.

While SEO specialists implement on-page techniques like creating title tags, using meta descriptions, and keywords optimization, the developers can take steps to improve the website architecture, loading speed, and mobile responsiveness. All of these will not only help you improve search engine ranking for your website, but they can also ensure a superb user experience. In other words, if you can impress users, you can impress the search engines.

CTA Placements – No talk on website content is complete without speaking about Call to Actions (CTA). Short, crisp, and to-the-point, a CTA should not get eclipsed by overall website content because it is a potent tool for driving conversions. As they motivate customers to take or complete actions, CTA buttons must be easy to spot on your website. Even if you have the most stunning website, you may struggle to convert visitors to leads without clear and well written CTAs.

If you could go beyond the basic buttons and got personalised CTAs, that would be even better. Do you wonder if that’s going to be worth the hassle? Yes, of course. As per the surveys, personalised CTAs can drive 202% better conversions (hubspot.com). So, choose the right colour, shape, size, and placement to grace your user-interface with powerful CTAs. Need some examples? Here they are…

Want to direct your visitors to the contact page? “Let’s Team Up”, “Get Started”, and “Discuss Your Project” are examples of some lead-nurturing CTA copies. Or do you want to add more subscribers to the email list? In that case, you can place CTAs like “Sign Up” or “Subscribe” on the relevant website section. Have press-worthy content on your website? Include the “Read More” button and let people explore and derive value from your content like blogs and articles. All in all, remember when the call-to-action buttons are crafted the right way, you can get the visitors to do what you want them.

Portfolios of Achievements – Should you showcase your work portfolio and business achievements on the website? Of course! Having spent so many years in the industry, you sure have made achievements that show your credibility and experience. In fact, the amazing display of work will also help you turn visitors into customers. However, showing off your triumphs is not easy as it seems. To showcase your feats without distracting the visitors, you will have to plan your website’s layout meticulously.

If you want the users to know more about your expertise and experience, you can dedicate a separate page containing your achievements. Or you may create a timeline highlighting your recent accreditations and certifications. Have you included CTAs on the website that will drive your visitors to the portfolio page? Make sure they are prominent, catchy, and encourage your visitors to dig deeper into your work. “Check Our Portfolio”, “Our Creation”, and “See Our Work” are some examples you may implement on your website.

A/B Tests – Your website is a work in progress, and as such, there is no place for ‘set and forget’ in its design & development process. A/B tests are a brilliant way of improving and optimising your website as per the current trends and practices. Basically, it is a type of split testing that compares and determines which version drives more conversions. Whether it is the CTA copy, layout, navigation links, or the overall content – you can test out several elements to pick the best fit for your business website.

Now, conducting an A/B test is no cakewalk and requires an expert to determine what works and what does not work for your website. To save yourself from the hassles, you can engage  website development services and let the experts handle the exercise on your behalf. Right from auditing your current website and selecting the right testing tool to formulating a hypothesis and creating variations – they take care of it all for conversion rate optimization.

Over to You!

Website redesigning is a challenging process, which can get you overwhelmed. But hang in there! Apply the best practices to improve your website and get an edge over competitors. If need be, don’t hesitate to seek professional assistance. Overall, we hope your website overhaul goes smooth and bears positive results for your business.