Revamping your website is an unavoidable process – online trends are changing rapidly, so even if a site was perfectly adequate just a few years ago, Google algorithm updates and changing user habits can quickly make it obsolete.
But figuring out the areas that need the most attention can be difficult. Unless you’re starting from scratch – and there are many guides and resources available nowadays that will teach you how to build a website from scratch – you will likely want to maintain at least parts of your website while still making it more convenient and appealing to today’s users.c
Luckily, there are common themes that pop up almost every time that a website needs to be redesigned. The last few years saw quite a few drastic changes in the way people browse online, so most sites that were designed before that are probably lacking in similar areas.
So what exactly should you focus on to make your website more user-friendly?
Well, here are four things you should keep in mind if you want the revamped website to make an impactful difference to your visitors and your bottom line.
Think About Your Site’s Visitors
The first step of the process doesn’t actually involve specific changes to your website. Yet despite that, it may be the most important thing you should do on this list.
You see, although many of the changes required when revamping a website are universal, sometimes the most critical issues are specific to your individual situation, so you’ll need to figure them out on your own.
Every market is different, so the expectations of your audience are likely unique as well – you need to make sure that your website meets their expectations and contains everything that they expect when coming to it.
But how can you figure out what your site’s visitors want?
Well, most websites collect analytics data that can be used to see the strong and weak spots of your site; look for pages that have a high bounce rate for clues on where the most pressing problems are located.
At the same time, see the pages that get the most traffic and try to use them as a blueprint for the entire website in terms of navigation, layout, and content.
If you’re not sure how to get started with this process, you can always consult a professional web design agency in London.
Make Navigation More Intuitive
Navigation is an integral part of the user experience on your website – if your site is confusing and difficult to browse, most of your visitors will simply give up and go elsewhere.
But how can you make your website’s navigation easier to use?
Well, there are a few easy-to-implement steps that can make a huge difference.
First off, you need to make sure that the main menu options are all important enough to be there – long or wide menus are distracting to the reader and make it more difficult for him to easily find what he’s looking for.
Instead, you should opt for a few main options and a drop-down menu that allows them to choose a more specific option in that segment according to their needs.
Also, make sure that your website is easily searchable by various categories and product description details, as sometimes users aren’t sure where to find something and need an easy way to do so.
Finally, if you’re selling a range of products, you absolutely must categorize them accordingly and provide the option to sort your assortment by different filters.
Mobile-Friendly Website is a Must
Mobile websites have been discussed in length by web design experts for quite a few years now. But until recently, it was mostly to do with the ever-growing numbers of mobile users more than anything else – businesses had to acknowledge that a lot of their users were not viewing their websites on a desktop and needed to make the browsing experience convenient on all devices.
But although that’s still a primary reason for making your website mobile-friendly, today it’s no longer just about user experience – if you don’t revamp your website so that it adapts to mobile devices, it will be penalized by Google and start losing its rankings on search engine result pages.
So, as any SEO agency in London will tell you, if you needed a secondary reason for adapting your website for mobile users, losing actual leads for having an outdated website is as good of a reason as any.
In fact, a strong case could be made for putting mobile users above desktop users when designing the user experience of your website – according to a report by Statista, over 61% of all internet users are expected to use mobile devices in 2018.
A few years ago, mobile app development in London was a very popular solution, but today, having both an app and a mobile-friendly website is the only way to satisfy all of your website’s visitors.
Make Sure It Loads Instantly
We’ve already talked about how Google is putting mobile-friendly websites first, but that’s not the only thing that Google is focusing on as it’s trying to make the browsing experience as convenient as possible for today’s users.
The online giant is also clamping down on slow sites and will start penalizing them if they do not meet the requirements.
But ensuring your website loads fast isn’t important just because Google says so – your site’s visitors won’t wait around if your pages take forever to load. And, since making your website run faster isn’t difficult, you don’t have to put off improving it as soon as today.
Tell Them the Next Steps
When a visitor stumbles on your website, you can’t leave their next actions up to chance – if at any point the visitor gets distracted or confused and doesn’t know where to click next, he will leave your site and go elsewhere.
That’s why you need to establish a clear system for providing the next steps to your site’s visitors on all of your pages.
But what are examples of good next steps?
Well, in simple terms, a next step is a link to the next logical action that the website visitor should make – for instance, if he just read an article on a particular subject, you should provide links to similar articles that provide more in-depth information, or provide a way to reach out to you if they want to learn more.
The important thing is to make the next step relevant to what the visitor has just seen or read to ensure that they maintain interest. Another thing to consider is that the next steps should be guiding the visitor to either subscribing to your list or contacting you so that you can start turning your leads into customers.
Leave a Reply