Considering a website make-over? What questions should you ask yourself?

Anyone thinking about a new website, or redesigning an outdated one, should make a serious list of questions before leaping into action. Questions are important because they can help define which type of website could make your business an online icon.

Regardless if you are hiring a professional to design your website or feel confident enough to do it yourself, make sure that after you have addressed your 4 most important questions, your list is segregated into categories. Before starting your groupings, think about the following:

1. Who will be visiting your site?

2. What are these people trying to accomplish?

3. What kind of actions do you want them to take? (buying a product, membership sign up, etc.)

4. What can you do to ensure that you can deliver exactly what they want, so you too can reach your goals?

Building your categorized list

1) Who will be visiting your site?

• What type of audience do you want to attract and impress? Believe it, or not, but there is quite a difference in the design of a website selling electronics or a culinary institute.  If you have been asked to design a website, also take into account what the manager and/or company owner wants.
• Are you targeting everyone on the Internet, or just a select group of people?
• Do you know the sites these individuals visit frequently?
• How do people find these sites? Word of mouth? Social media circles?
• Will you maintain a site with universal accessibility? In that case, what languages do you want to incorporate?

2) What are these people trying to accomplish?

• Will your site’s visitors be looking for information? Services? Merchandise?
• How important are search engines to you? If they matter, what rankings are you aiming for? What are you willing to spend to achieve that goal? Would you be willing to compromise in order to attain your goal?
• If this website is being built by request, what does the site’s owner/manager want to achieve through re-designing the site, what areas do they most want to improve?

3) What action do you want them to take?

• How often do you want your fans to visit your site?
• How long do you want them to stay?
• Will you offer them news updates?  New arrival notifications? Newsletter? Blogs?
• Can they contact you? How? (by phone, fax, email, comment form, etc.)
• Will you create an “about us” page?
• Do you want to list your company policies? Shipping information? Warrantees?
• Will you spread the word and advertise using social media sites?
• Do you intend to sell merchandise/services, to be a teacher, or are you just offering general information?

4) What can you do to ensure that you can deliver exactly what they want, so you too can reach your goals?

• What is the goal of your site?
• What specific outcomes are you aiming for?
• Are you going to follow up on comments and reviews?
• If you are a seller, what is your return policy?
• Will you spend the time to implement testing and analysis to ensure your customer is happy with your website and performing the desired actions?
• Are you willing to expand your inventory to please your customers?
• How much time and money are you willing to spend on Search Engine Optimisation in order to increase your rankings and profit margin?

Defining your Operational strategy

Aside from your persuasive questions, you probably should also compose a list of operational questions.

• How many people should be in your team? At what level should they be involved?
• Who will be in charge of the actual web development? Website updates?
• When should updates be scheduled?
• How often can you afford a website overhaul?
• What is your budget?
• When do you want the website be up and running?

It is important to know ahead of time how much your website re-design will cost you. If the expense is too high, you will have to rethink your initial objectives, or postpone the plans to re-design your site to a later date. Any doubts? See what answers you will come up with to these questions.

• Do you really need to re-design, or could you not simply upgrade your current site?
• In what way could a re-designed site serve our visitors better?
• Are you going to incorporate a scientific testing methodology into your re-design to improve website performance?
• The best converting sites often have boring designs. Are you willing to give up your intellectual integrity and original design for your business needs, or are you willing to take a chance to try out something new?

Maybe you do not need to re-design your website. Sometimes a few tweaks here and there can be just as effective. If that is indeed an option, isolate what is working from what is not, and determine what you can discard.

Achieving your goals

A brand new website may not always be the answer to a shortage of visitors, slow click-through, and low conversions. Maybe your design is just fine, but you are lacking other crucial elements. How much time do you spend on SEO? How fresh and attractive is your content? How fast (or slow) is the download time of your site? Are all your links working? These are all website features that can be improved without giving your site a complete overhaul.

So, before undertaking such a huge change, give your existing site a good, hard look. Schedule a few extra tests, and contact people who know their trade inside and out. They may be able to give you suggestions on what you can try first, before spending a lot of money and time on a re-design. But is a re-design is on the cards, ensure you consult the right people and take the right steps to ensure a successful and effective outcome for your business.

About the author: Michael Jenkins is the director of Shout Web Strategy which is a firm in Melbourne specializing in Search, conversion rate optimization and web usability.