Whether you’re looking to improve your website’s front- or back-end functionality or simply to help convert more visitors into customers; a wordpress website redesign can help you meet your business and marketing goals by offering better functionality, messaging and more engaging content.
Most experts agree that today, websites should be redesigned every 24-36 months to make sure you’re staying on top of the latest technology and to ensure your messaging and content are not growing stale. Yes, you should do this even if your website is being updated via blog, or if you have performed small design tweaks over time or in phases.
The biggest challenges when working on a WordPress website redesign have to do with maintaining your website’s SEO positioning, and making sure all the content gets migrated at the same time to avoid broken links or 404 errors. Regardless of the size of your company, I always recommend coming up with a proper plan to cover your website through the transition to your newly redesigned site.
Should you go with a theme?
Themes are fantastic. And for a long time, they were the only way to get a decent looking redesigned website quickly and on a budget. Today, themes are sometimes not worth the trouble with the availability of more powerful frameworks like Elementor or Divi that allow you full flexibility to build a powerful website without the need for dozens of plugins.
At Storey Creative, we don’t work with pre-designed themes. I pride myself on designing custom solutions for every single website project to ensure that your company’s mission, vision and conversions are not relying on pre-fabricated modules that appear on hundreds of other websites all over the web.
What about should I look for from a vendor when it’s time to redesign my WordPress website?
Make sure you are paying for 100% original design and content as well as custom photography. The years to rely on free or low cost stock photography are over. Your WordPress designer should be able to connect you with a high-quality photography vendor that will come to you for photos; and provide that vendor with proper direction as to the content, look and feel of the photography to be obtained.
Your website designer should be able to connect you with, or help you come up with, updated copy for every single one of your pages. This should include ideas or information on how to write meta titles and meta descriptions for your pages, so that you can have the best possible SEO outcomes; as well as helping ensure that there is a set customer and conversion path for your website from every single page.
Should my website be accessible?
Absolutely. You should be covering all your bases when it comes to complying with local, state and federal regulations. This includes ADA accessibility – via plugin is okay – as well as offering updated privacy policies, terms and conditions as well as GDPR compliance.
In order to do this, your website designer should be able to make ADA recommendations and be informed about the level of compliance that is proper for your site; as well as direct you to the proper place to purchase privacy policies, terms and conditions and GDPR compliance agreements that are tailored to your business needs and uses.
In addition to being accessible, your website should also be completely responsive natively. This means that your site doesn’t rely on a third-party app in order to be viewed on mobile devices; and that the entire site can load via a device connected to a cellular network instead of WIFI at a decent speed.
What else should I be looking out for?
Data is king. If your website is not collecting basic information about how your potential customers and leads are using your website, you won’t be able to make data-based decisions regarding content, design and further improvements into the functionality of your wordpress website.
Your website designer should be providing you with a fully tagged website on Google Tag Manager as well as basic reporting via Google Analytics so that you can understand how people behave once on your site.
Say goodbye to the contact form.
The increase in spam activity during the 2020 pandemic, means forms are just ways of receiving increasingly creative spam. Your real clients are more likely to book an appointment to talk to someone than fill out a form that asks for name, email and message. Most CRM platforms offer a way to create smart forms, offer appointment scheduling or even direct messaging while on the site so you can immediately start working on closing your next sale.
