Complete guide to redesigning a website

Here is the complete guide from Elitech Systems to redesigning a website in the best conditions.

Do not neglect the expression of needs for the redesign of your website

What is a web project?

A project comprises a succession of actions which serve a defined objective, within the framework of a precise mission, for which a beginning and an end are fixed. It is divided into 4 steps:

• Analysis of the need
• Construction and planning
• Driving and piloting
• Closure and evaluation

Objectives of the redesign of a website

Before launching the redesign, it is a question of clearly defining the contours of the project and of wondering about the objectives:

• A more modern site: the current site is not very attractive and a redesign would notably make it possible to attract new customers / prospects
• Improved user experience and ergonomics: reduce loading times, add Call-To-Action, etc.
• A change in positioning, name, graphic charter, logo …
• A change of CMS (Content Management System): to have easier access to the administration of the site for example
• An evolution of the technical features of the site: addition of a form, a mega menu, creation of a user area, a reservation calendar, etc.
• A site more visible on search engines through improved SEO

Upstream of the project, it is necessary to clearly define the limits of the current site, its gaps. This can also be the subject of a technical and / or SEO audit to know if the site needs to be completely or partially redone.

Audit of the website before redesign

The purpose of the audit is to highlight the various problems on the site and to assess its scalability. The audit concerns the technical part of the site but also the SEO aspect (Search Engine Optimization = natural referencing).

The audit analyzes several aspects of the site:

• Understanding of site structure, code and analysis of page load times
• Hosting and domain name settings
• Navigation: does the site easily direct the user to the page they are looking for? Does the menu provide access to the information sought? Is it clear? Are the topic names self-explanatory?
• SEO blockages: why is the site not well indexed / why is it little (or not) visible in Google? How to boost visibility and SEO?
• Understanding of how users interact on the site: what pages do they visit? What pages exactly are they not viewing?

Zoom on the specifications

As with the creation of a site, it is necessary to create precise specifications . The more precise it is, the more efficient the project will be. By entrusting the project to a web agency, it will be able to cost it as well as possible. A client who does not know how to precisely describe their need may simply not be ready to start this type of project.

Project start: the scoping meeting

Once the service provider has been chosen, a project begins with a scoping meeting. Remember, we broached the subject in an article: The main stages of creating a website, the framing phase

The scoping meeting makes it possible to:

• Discuss the scope of the project
• Estimate the necessary resources and the actors of the project
• Define the “personas”: the portraits of the users, of the people who come to the site / the targets / the problems they seek to solve by coming to the site
• Define the timing of the project

The content phase

This is an absolutely crucial phase, sometimes neglected , and which can be anticipated.

The “sitemap” or tree structure of the site before redesign

The first step which will be discussed in the scoping meeting also concerns the structure of your site. The tree structure lists all the pages of your website and how they relate to each other.

The current tree structure should first be reviewed, on an Excel file for example or via Power Point with a diagram.

Once the tree structure is flattened, it must be optimized based on observations from the audit and navigation statistics from a tool such as Google Analytics. It may be necessary to add missing pages or conversely to delete some, merge others. Pages may be incomplete, their structure to be reviewed or their title to be changed.

Content work

One of the challenges often observed by web providers is in the recovery of content.

Text content

When you entrust your project to a web agency, the agency must position it in its agenda among the projects under development. If a customer is late in sending the necessary content to integrate on his site, does not respect the timings indicated for this sentence, this pushes back the project. If a client is a day late but the agency’s agenda is full for the week, he can lose a week!

Image content

Either the client provides the images or the agency can undertake iconographic research to illustrate the site. This aspect can also be anticipated. As such, there are image banks, free or paid; unless you have a library of original photographs, which is best. Images should help reading and support texts. A colorful text is always more pleasant to read.

Zoning, wireframe and models

This is the step before the design; it occurs once the tree structure and the expected functionalities are defined.

A schematic outline of the future site is then drawn indicating the different sections of the site: this is the zoning stage.

Then comes the wireframing phase, during which details are added to the previous zoning step. A description of the content of each zone is added. If we already have the content, we add it.

Finally, the mock-up adds the graphic charter, the texts and images: this is the phase which will allow the client to project himself and to validate the graphic and aesthetic aspect before the site is developed.

This is the stage where we integrate the entire graphic layer, we choose the fonts, the size of the different elements, we affix the logo, the pictograms, we define the shape of the menu, etc.

2 options are then possible for this job. Either the client provides the graphic charter (colors, logo, typography, etc.), or the agency has more or less “carte blanche”.

At the end of its work, the agency provides a model, which will respect the wireframe established previously. It is then up to the customer to validate it.

The model is validated? It’s time to move on to site development and content integration.

For more details on these 3 steps, do not hesitate to consult our dedicated article: The main steps in creating a website – Zoning, wireframe and mock-up .

Website development

This is the phase during which the developers will code and integrate the specific functionalities described in the specifications. The integrators, for their part, will be in charge of integrating the content on the future site.

Some agencies work according to an agile method, that is to say they involve the client as and when this step to ensure that the project goes in the expected direction. This allows you to make small adjustments during the project, rather than changing everything at the end. This is a plus and this method is often offered by agencies that integrate a project management service.

The importance of 301 redirects for SEO

During a redesign, there is a good chance that the links of the pages will change when the text contents and the tree structure are redesigned.

It will therefore be necessary to plan work on redirects: if this is not done and a user clicks on an old URL, he will end up on a 404 error page. This is particularly bad both for the referencing of the website on search engines but also for user experience.

You must therefore plan for 301 redirects and indicate to Google that certain pages have permanently changed their names. As a bonus, this will allow you to maintain the quality of the referencing of the pages concerned.

Receipt

The client’s mission? A complete review of the site before it is put online. This is a key stage during which it is necessary to reassemble the typos that may remain on the site, the bugs and other necessary modifications. Numerous tests are then carried out to detect the slightest malfunction.

We discussed the acceptance phase in detail in our article The main stages of creating a website – The acceptance process .

Once the entire site is validated, it is put into production.

The production of the website

During this last step, you must then plan:

• hosting, with more or less powerful servers depending on the traffic forecast on the website and technical requirements,
• SEO optimization: a site must be responsive design, it is necessary to check that the metas (titles and description) have been correctly defined, to check the loading time of the pages and the weight of the images or that the site is readable by Google
• the correct indexing of the site on Google Search Console
• communication on social networks
• the configuration of Google Analytics
• training teams on the site administration interface