I like to think of a company’s website as its front porch for potential customers. They haven’t decided if they’re going to walk through the front door into the house yet, but they might sit on the porch with you for a few minutes, especially if you offer them some iced tea or lemonade. (And yes, as you’re probably guessing, I did grow up in the South.)
Your website is arguably your most valuable digital asset in connecting with existing customers and prospects and introducing them to the experience of your brand. It’s where you get to showcase how you can help solve their problems, highlight the personality of your brand, and drive home your unique value in the marketplace.
So, yeah, redesigning your website is a big deal. From my years of leading website redesign projects for companies large and small, I’ve found that everyone usually gets excited about it, from the CEO to the marketing department and the sales team.
When taking on a website redesign with such visibility in a company — and the pressure that comes along with that — you need to make sure you have laid the proper foundation of inquiry before you do anything else.
Nine questions to ask before redesigning your website
1. What is your current website not helping your team accomplish that you wish it would?
No matter how strategically planned out, a website can start to fail to deliver on certain needs, especially as a business evolves or leaders that value different initiatives circulate through a company. Also, digital technology changes rapidly, so your current website may not have some key functionality that has now become standard in your industry.
Use this question to identify internal pain points with your current website so you can build those requirements into the site redesign.
2. What features or functionality do you find useful on your current site?
Even if you have an older website, hopefully there are some features and functionality on it that still serve your users and/or your team. While this may seem obvious, it’s important to document these so you don’t lose them in the development of a new site.
3. What new features or functionality are essential for your new site?
This is the fun stuff to dream up. Whether the hottest new thing for web experiences or just basic features your company has been needing for a long time, here’s a chance to make your wish list. My recommendation is to get creative and go big with it, then you can scale back the asks when it comes to aligning with development capabilities or budget.
4. What main problem does the website need to solve for your target audience?
I’ve seen this kind of question answered incorrectly more than any other. Clients frequently respond in terms of what we want our audience to do instead of addressing what the audience needs. For instance “promote our new products” or “generate leads” are not the right answers here.
You have to think from your audience’s perspective. What is the main challenge or pain point you know they have? Make sure you understand it and clearly define it.
5. How can the website best provide solutions for your target audience?
Once you’ve identified the main problem your audience has, you have to determine how your website provides solutions to it. Again, don’t think in terms of what you want users to do yet. Stay focused on how you can serve them.
Do they need education, specific industry information, quick answers to common questions, in-depth knowledge in a specialized niche, entertaining content, product details, competitor comparisons? The answers to that vary widely based on your industry and your audience. Whatever they are, make sure your site is built to deliver those solutions effectively.
6. What does success for your team look like with a website that meets all your needs?
Here’s a chance to actually look internally to your company and your team specifically. Forget about your users for a second (but only a second), and think about what your team will be able to achieve with a website that actually gives you what you need. Consider the implications launching a new website may have to help your team hit goals, create opportunities for new strategies, or simply free up bandwidth to work on other projects.
7. What is your definition of success for a new website?
From the business benefits to how your new website will better serve users, what does success look like? You can define this in terms of leads generated, pipeline revenue — and/or engagement metrics like scroll depth, clickthroughs, time on page, and pages per session. Defining that success should be custom tailored to your goals and your company’s needs, and it should always tie back to delivering value to the business.
8. What's the one key message you want users to know after visiting your site?
I often refer to this as the “single most important message.” Whether a visitor comes to your site and clicks around to a number of pages or if they only hit a couple pages before they exit the site, what is the one thing you want them to remember about your company? The answer to this question can give you strong insight to the key brand messages you incorporate onto every page.
9. If a visitor does one thing on your site, what would you want that to be?
Of course this is complicated if your site serves multiple audiences. However, across the board, you should be able to say what is the most important action you hope a visitor would take on your site. Define that and optimize your site for it.
Build a foundation for success
Asking these questions and getting consensus from stakeholders on the answers before you start a website redesign will prove incredibly beneficial in aligning your company’s purpose, goals, and vision for your new website. The foundation it provides also makes the hard work in the next phases of the project a little easier.
A company website redesign and launch can be a massive undertaking, but, done right, it can provide incredible benefits to your audience by offering them what they need and present it in the way they want to find it. A new website can also be the catalyst to serving your existing customers better, telling your brand story more creatively, and connecting with more prospects to get more (and more qualified) leads.
At Artifact Branding & Marketing, we’re your expert partner for your next website redesign and launch. What can working with us on your website creation and search engine optimization (SEO) do for you? Well, here are some results our website clients have recently experienced:
- Doubled website traffic
- 3x increase in leads from the website
- Secured the #5 position on the first page of search engine results in a very competitive industry
- Helped attract and recruit top industry talent after struggling to do so with their old site
- Created a site that helped close a deal for a multi-million dollar acquisition
