The prospect of a website redesign can be daunting for any small business owner. Before investing the time and money necessary for such an undertaking, entrepreneurs should consider six factors.
Does your site feel fresh? If your site feels as though it no longer accurately reflects your company, feels stale, is overly complicated or just unmemorable, it’s time for an update.
Does your site feel effortless? Your site worked exactly the way you wanted it to when it first launched. Does upgrades, changes, expanded product categories and new content made it unwieldy and difficult for visitors to navigate (and for you to manage and easily update)? If so, it’s definitely time for a redesign.
Are you really as customer service oriented as you think you are? What and how your customers order (or don’t order), their comments and phone calls, tell you everything you need to know about how user-friendly your site is. You might believe you are doing everything you can to make their experience positive, but their words and actions will tell you if that is true. Listen and redesign around their feedback; it will pay off for both of you.
Are you really as shopper-focused as you think you are? Your site’s design must cater to your customers. Your content and labeling should speak their language. Your navigation structure should allow for customers to shop the way they want to shop – not how you think they should. Be there when they need you, and get out of their way when they don’t.
Are you utilizing social media? The time when you could ignore social media is gone. Integrating sharing and interaction features with your site will increase traffic and sales. Different businesses need different amounts of social exposure, but almost every site can benefit from it in some way.
Are you capitalizing on recent technology advantages? Every day, new technologies are making more and more things possible and raising consumers’ expectations. These days, it is imperative to offer location-based functionality, integrated product reviews, fast page load times and simple methods for browsing and finding products.
If you answered “no” to any of these questions, it’s probably time to at least consider a website redesign.
Posts Tagged → website design
Take a few minutes out of your day and help a Scottish charity
Draw on any webpage. Share thoughts. Move ideas.
Markup Overview
Express thoughts quickly and easily on any webpage. Share ideas with coworkers and friends. Since MarkUp works in your browser, so there’s nothing to download and install. Just drag the Get MarkUp icon into your bookmarks bar. When you want to make notes on a webpage, click your bookmarklet to load the MarkUp toolbar. Publish when you’re ready to share your thoughts.
- Draw on any webpage with MarkUp
- Stay in your browser. Nothing to download
- Get MarkUp by bookmarking this icon
- Make shapes with the magic marker
- Write with the text tool
- Publish to share your ideas
Such a simple tool but Markup.io could be so useful in web design/development.
Third Sector Lab – a wee update
Just thought I’d share some of the website design & development work we’ve completed recently:
I’ll also be able to share some of the work we’re carrying out for the Women’s Fund for Scotland soon – that’s a website we’re pretty excited about and we feel privileged to be working on.
I’ve been busy organising Be Good Be Social and, most importantly, I’ve been taking on a lot of new client work so the Third Sector Lab website hasn’t been a priority. We’re having a complete rethink about the site design/purpose - you’ll see a fresh new look early 2011.
If you’re interested in finding out what digital media services we offer and what makes us different get in touch via twitter, LinkedIn or email me ross[@]thirdsectorlab.co.uk
