Revamp and Refresh: A beginner’s guide to website redesign
In today’s digital age, a website’s success depend on its ability to provide a meaningful experience to its users. A UX designer has the power to transform an outdated or underperforming website into an engaging and intuitive platform that captivates visitors and drives conversions.
If you are a beginner, a website redesign might seem like a daunting task. So let’s dive in and explore the key considerations and best practices for an effective website redesign.
Define your goals
The first step is to clearly define what you want to achieve from the redesign. Is it to improve the overall user experience of the site? Or is it to increase engagement or user conversion rates? Or refresh the branding? Having a clear aim & objectives from the very beginning will provide a sense of direction.
Understand your users
Before you jump into the redesign, you should understand who your target users are and their needs, preferences and behaviour. For this, you need to conduct user research through interviews, surveys and user testing. Create user personas and map out user journeys to understand how they interact with your site and where they might be facing issues.
Evaluate the current website
Assessing the existing website will give you an idea about what is working and what’s not and how the site can be enhanced to provide a better user experience. Use tools like Google Analytics to perform analytics reviews of the site. Conduct usability testing with actual users and observe how they interact with your site, where they encounter issues and what aspects they find enjoyable. Perform heuristic evaluation of the site, using Jakob Nielson’s 10 usability heuristics, to identify usability issues. Use accessibility checking tools and guidelines such as WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) to assess the site’s accessibility. You can do a content audit and check whether the website content is relevant, accurate and up-to-date.
Perform a Competitor Analysis
By knowing your competitors and understanding how they operate and what they offer, you can identify opportunities to differentiate your website and meet user needs in a way that competitors might not. Do a website evaluation to understand their content, layout, navigation, etc. Create a side by side comparison of the features offered by your website and the competitors. Check the user reviews of the competitors on app stores, social media and other platforms.
Plan your Information Architecture(IA)
Perform a card sorting activity with your users to understand how your users categorize information and can guide you to structure your IA. Using the insights from your previous steps, create a draft IA. This often takes the form of a site map or flow chart with boxes representing pages or sections of the site and arrows indicating the flow of navigation.
Create Wireframes and Prototypes
Wireframing and Prototyping are two crucial stages in the website design process. Wireframes are about “what goes where” on a page and it provides a structural plan. Prototypes on the other hand are about “how it works”, simulating the interactions between the user and the website interface. You can create a low fidelity prototype which are simple click through models without much visual design.
User Interface Design and Development
This is where the visual and interactive elements of the website come together. It involves designing the aesthetic details like colours, typography, spacing, images, animations, etc. It also involves creation and positioning of UI components like buttons, menu, text fields, etc. In order to create an accessible UI design, consider things like colour contrast, font sizes and keyboard navigation. Once the UI design is complete, you can give your design for development.
Conduct Usability Testing
In order to validate that your design works well for your users, conduct usability testing before the final launch of your revamped website. Also, test your website on various devices, browsers and screen sizes to ensure that it is fully responsive and works seamlessly across different platforms. Design is an iterative process and therefore it is important to take feedback from the testing and make improvements as necessary.
Redesigning may seem like an uphill task for beginners, but by keeping your focus on your users and needs, you can navigate successfully through the redesign process. Always remember that its “users first” in every step of the redesign process. Happy redesigning! :)
