You know it's time for a website redesign, but what are the next steps?

You’ve probably had a website for a few years. When you first launched, you were getting visitor traffic, and your business grew. Lately, you’ve noticed a drop in visitors every month and your not getting quite as many calls from your site. It’s probably time for a website redesign.

A major transformation of your site is a time-consuming undertaking. Your website is a major part of your overall marketing effort. It affects your social media, email marketing and lead generation efforts in a big way. When working with your agency, here are a few things to consider before you start that will ensure your site creates leads and drives sales.

1. Check your current analytics to gauge your site’s actual performance.
Before you start, take a look at your site’s historic performance and compare it to today.  Look at the following,

• Unique visitors, number of visits, and where your traffic originates
• Bounce rate
• Time spent on each page
• Domain authority
• Number of leads generated
• Current SEO ranking
• Number of sales generated

It’s important to know up-to-the-minute facts about your website’s performance. There are plenty of tools available, like Google Analytics, Squarespace Analytics Tool or Hubspot’s Closed-Loop Analytics to help you track your site.

2. Determine the goals for your website.
Clearly define your goals. Is your site dated? Have your lead generation or conversion rates declined? Are you looking to create a better mobile experience for your visitors using responsive design? All of these are valid reasons for a website redesign, and all require different tweaks. By clearly defining your objective, you can determine your redesign strategy.

3. Inventory your web assets.
Check the analytics of each page of your current site.  If it’s not broke, don’t fix it. You’ve spent time and money creating content, losing that content can affect your marketing efforts. Know which pages on your site still have value. Know which pages get the most hits, and shares. Make sure you are aware of your best performing keywords and that pages have strong inbound links. Removing these from your site could affect your SEO. Inventory your assets before embarking on your website redesign.

4. Check out your competitors websites.
You need to be aware of what your competition is up to. Check your site at Marketing Grader to determine how your site is performing, and then check your competitors sites.  Visit their site and make a note of what you like and what you don’t.  This will help you to uncover areas for improvement on your site. Once you’ve finished, create an action plan for your designer. List areas you can improve and do differently than your competitors' sites.

5. Make sure you offer a unique value to your visitors.
Before you begin writing new content, identify what unique value you are offering. Make sure your message is consistent across your site. Be clear and concise in your offering and ensure that it offers value to visitors of your site. You want to drive traffic and generate leads for later conversion. By keeping your value offering consistent throughout your site, you can clarify your position for potential clients, convert them to leads and keep them coming back.

Useful website redesign takes time and a little effort. These tips can help you to get started.