Redesigning a Website - How often do you need to do it?

With so much attention being given to the digital entity - the website, these days; it is essential to keep up to the changing trends. Redesigning your website is important because Google is constantly watching your website and the updates that you make to enhance your website. From a technical and ranking point of view, you need to keep on updating your website to meet the criteria of a good functional website. The sole reason being, that is the ultimate goal of taking so much pain to constantly upgrade and update your websites. Let us see how redesigning your website will help you stay updated and how often you need to do it.

1. When do you know that it is time to redesign your website?
Many times you may feel that your current existing website is doing great. It is advisable to take a look at your website periodically. There are many online performance analysis tools that will help you to carry out a health check of your website and know the status. Pay close attention to the following questions when the thought of redesigning your website hits your mind.

=> Does my website look old school?
=> Is my Website in par with the current new buddy companies’ websites?
=> What is the page insight score of my website?
=> How attractive is my website in terms of color themes?
=> Is my website easy to navigate?
=> Does my website give all the required information clearly?
=> Is my website layout okay and up to the current web trends?

When you try to address these questions, you will have an idea of what is wrong and where. It is then you need to consider redesigning your website on a serious note.

2. Checklist to watch out for while Redesigning a Website
There are certain points you need to think over when you redesign your website due to the fact that redesigning/revamping your website comes with a cost. Since there are high chances of a change of your website URL, you need to keep in mind that Google will take time to re-rank you and you need to do the needful pretty correctly to make the whole process worth your efforts.

The below listed is a checklist you might need to consider while you redesign your website. It will take approximately around 6 months to come back on the list of re-ranked websites and thereby, you need to keep the following points in your mind and do the needful so that the checklist is taken care of.

2.1. Content Optimization Strategies
When you are redesigning your website, you need to have a close watch over the content optimization in terms of the page layout and the SEO optimization according to the current trends. Take extreme care of the following:

Share options
Search options

This is due to the fact that when you redesign your website because being updated means enabling sharing options on all the platforms including the ones that have been launched anew. Also, when people search for specifics on your website, you need to make sure that relevant content is displayed as search results.

2.2. Lack of Conversions
While redesigning a website, you need to have in mind what the previous website conversion strategy was in terms of the layout of the ‘Call to Action’ and other options which aided in conversions. You need to fathom those website conversion strategies against the current website conversion strategies and then design and implement the final conversion building features on the website in order to avoid the lack of conversion issues.

2.3. Internal Linking Optimization
You need to take extreme care of the internal linking when you redesign your website. You may have valuable content that needs to adapt to the redesigning strategy. Therefore you need to carefully match them while you redesign your website.

2.4. Responsive Design Compatibility
Since most of the browsing happens on mobile these days, it has become a mandate that you keep an eye on the mobile version of your website while redesigning. Mobile-Friendly Index (MFI) is something you need to carefully take care of because Google counts that in while ranking your website overall.

2.5. Cost of Redesigning
A word of advice, kindly, do not underestimate the cost of redesigning a website. You may have a notion that you are ‘just redesigning’, but redesigning involves more work than designing a website. So, you need to have a clear budget allocation for redesigning your website in the first place.

2.6. Timeline for Website Redesign
In general, whatever the task, you need to have different deadlines. Though it is considered pure professional ethics to stick to deadlines strictly, there are unforeseen factors that come into the picture like, in the case of redesigning a website, the time taken to get the technical entities up and running and the time for penalties if something goes wrong, or if the person who is redesigning your website falls ill, etc.

So, if you set your website designing work’s timeline for a period of three weeks, have one or weeks extra in the timeline. This will help you to get quality output at the end of the redesigning process.

3. Strategies to Redesign your Website
When you have come to the conclusion that it is high time to redesign your website, you need to carry out a market research analysis. Next, you need to read many blogs to have an idea of the current web trends. After which you take a look at the top-notch companies’ websites to get an idea of the status of the updates. And then follow the below-listed strategic approach to get the best out of redesigning your website.

Analyze your current/old website for the performance and other essential features.
Write down your present priorities in order to identify your points to improve.
Analyze your target audience and plot a learning graph to understand their needs.
Highlight the points that are working great in your current/old website.
You need to make a list of your new perceptions on your website.
Clearly define your present goals. Pen down new strategies that are up-to-date.
Design a redesigning plan for your website and start implementing the step by step.

By adhering to the above-mentioned strategic steps in redesigning a website, you will be able to redesign your website in accordance with the present web trends.

4. Tips to Redesign your Website
When you decide to go for redesigning a website, you need to keep in mind that your web traffic will be affected temporarily. It will take roughly around 6 months for Google to re-identify your website and start analyzing and evaluating your website on the grounds of different SEO ranking parameters and then start re-ranking your website. So, you need to make careful plans for relaunching your redesigned website.

In addition to the above discussed strategic steps to redesign your website, the following tips will come in handy:

Have a perfect balance of the visual and verbose content on your redesigned website.
Go for a personalized website redesign that highlights and shows off your brand.
Color Themes - Use good contrasting color themes
If you did not pay much attention to the blog section, it is high time to do so.
When you redesign your landing page, have conversions in your mind and redesign.
Make sure each and every element on your website is optimized for SEO ranking.
Try to incorporate voice search and chatbots if possible.

The above tips are in accordance with the current web trends. Make a note of these and try to get them implemented in your redesigned website. Now that SEO Ranking plays an important role in SERP, you need to pay close attention to the details. It is best to redesign your website according to the most sought after updated web trends periodically, but keep updating your website by means of blogs and likewise every week. It is very important that you do so.

5. Conclusion
Redesigning a website requires more careful planning especially about the details that contribute significantly to the overall SEO ranking. With the advent of AI and ML algorithms and their extensive usage in the digital platform, it has become challenging to satisfy the expectations of the AI algorithms. It is crucial that you keep your website updated in accordance with the current web trends. The success of your business depends on this parameter as well due to the fact that your digital presence and performance are equally important as your physical business performance. Therefore, have the above-discussed elements in your mind when you redesign your website.