Right from the Start: The Secrets to a Successful Website Redesign

Your website should be your number one salesman 24 hours a day, seven days a week. But if your site has lost its luster and isn’t performing as it should, a redesign might be just the right prescription to boost its ability to capture and convert new leads.

Redesign your website is an exciting prospect filled with so many possibilities. It is, quite literally, the dawn of a new day for your company’s web presence, but how and where do you start?

Here’s a website redesign road map that will put you on the track to success right from the start.

Start with your “wish list.”

Naturally, when you’re embarking on a website redesign project, your first inclination is to make an exhaustive list of all the features and functionality you want to incorporate in the new site.

Having a wish list is helpful, but clinging insistently to executing every single one of those items can be a recipe for a budget-busting project.

Go ahead and create your wish list, but once you’re done, the next step in the process is to put on your editor’s hat. Strike through every single feature that is not essential to success. Don’t be afraid to be aggressive in your editing. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.

Keep only the mission-critical features that will create a better, more value-packed user experience. Shed the “nice-to-have” features that will appeal to only a very small sub‐segment of your audience or that represent a personal “pet project.” These will only clutter your site and make it harder for the majority of your customers to find what they need quickly and easily.

If you can maintain a critical, objective eye through this editing process, your wish list will be substantially reduced, and you will have a much more solid foundation for a successful project.

Fight the “now-or-never” mentality.

One of the obstacles you’ll face when trying to pare down your wish list is the thinking that if you don’t do something now, you won’t get the chance to do it again in the near future. After all, how often do you redesign your website?

Instead, take a phase-based approach to the project. With your long-term goals and objectives in mind, decide what you must have now and what can wait until your company and your customers’ needs have reached the next plateau.

By mapping out anticipated future iterations and additions at the outset, you can make sure that your new site is built with the underpinnings it needs to support later growth and expansion.

Also, by breaking your redesign project into phases, you can launch the first version more quickly and without blowing your entire budget. This will give you time to gather feedback on the site and shape your future development plans accordingly.

The responses you receive from your customers after your new site launches may reinforce your decision to shed certain unnecessary features, or you may discover that they’re asking for another feature you had not previously considered. By breaking your project into smaller phases, you can take action on this valuable feedback quickly, instead of waiting until the next big redesign project. In this way, you can show your customers that you’re listening to them and that you care deeply about what they have to say – a great way to continue to build customer loyalty.

So now that you have your wish list and your phase-based approach nailed down, what’s next? It’s time for the big “d” – design.

Never cut corners on design.

Many redesign projects center around the need for a new look and feel for the website. Maybe your site’s current design isn’t a good reflection of your brand, or perhaps your company has simply outgrown a site that was launched early on in its history. Or you may just feel that your site is tired and outdated and in desperate need of modernization.

Regardless of the reasons driving your redesign, creating a Class-A look and feel with a user experience to match is a critical, yet often undervalued, piece of your website redevelopment project.

Adding new features or functionality will be pointless if the look of the site or the experience it creates is not up to par. Success starts with great design, and quality design should never take a backseat to fancy bells and whistles.

Consider this scenario: Let’s say you have a website with an outdated look that’s lacking the helpful features your customers want. If you were to update it with a strong modernized design but include none of those new features, you would still realize some measure of success. You’d have an attractive new design and a quality user experience, and that alone is an improvement that you can then build upon in later phases. If, however, you go the opposite route by trying to shoehorn new features into a bad existing design, your site will still suffer from that outdated look and poor user experience, and your investment will be for naught.

Great features supported by bad design have a very steep hill to climb. By investing in good design early on, you’ll ensure that all future investment in the website – when you do add those extra features – will have the best chance for success instead of being forced to fight a losing battle against a poorly designed user interface.

Design with the future in mind.

Deploying a website that is streamlined, efficient and customer-focused is a great start. But the feedback you receive after launch and the desire to continually improve the site will ultimately drive what comes next – those subsequent phases that you have already planned for. To this end, you will need to make sure that the new design and platform will support future growth.

As you edit aggressively early on in this process, you should also continually ask yourself if the plans that you’re making will scale appropriately. How will the site grow with your company over the next 6 months? How about the next 12 or 24 months? How will this mesh with the future phases you have planned as well as the unexpected feedback you may get along the way?

Whether you are hiring a web development firm for your redesign project or are working with an in‐house team, ask them about the technologies that are being used on the new site, from HTML5 to CSS3 to responsive design to the content management system (CMS), and think about how those technologies will work for you today and tomorrow. When it comes to the foundation behind the scenes, never make a choice to save money in the short term that isn’t the best choice for the long term, or else you’ll ultimately end up shelling out a lot more money over time.

A successful website redesign project can start small and focused on critical elements, but to achieve long-term success, that streamlined approach must allow for future scalability so your website will grow with your company, evolve along with emerging technologies and continue to fuel your success.

Take the plunge.

There are many different ways to get from point A to point B when building a website, but regardless of the process you and your team follow, the fundamental principal of starting small and focused on critical elements for success and adding improvements over time is one that will never steer you wrong. Instead of trying to do everything at once, taking this approach will allow you to launch a new website that is a visual and functional improvement without getting bogged down by “nice-to-have” features that will ultimately add very little value but potentially cause very big headaches.

A great design bolstered by key usability features and an eye towards future growth and scalability are the keys to creating a website that will serve as a catalyst for the growth of your business today, tomorrow and beyond.

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Rediscover the Lost Art of Focus

Does this sound like a typical occurrence in your day? You've just wrapped up one task, and before you move on to the next, you decide to take a quick break to see what's new on Facebook. Hey, look – your friend posted a link to an article in the New York Times. You click through to read, and when you're done, one of the related articles catches your eye. That one leads to another and then another. When you finally reemerge from the rabbit hole of link-clicking, you realize that half an hour has evaporated. Or perhaps your e-mail notification alert chimes, and you click over to find a reminder that your car is due for service. While you’re waiting on hold with the dealership to schedule your appointment, it occurs to you that you haven't checked the balance in your bank account lately, so you log in, and then you remember that you also need to pay your water bill. Before you know it, what began as a simple two-minute task has become a 20-minute derailment.

The cost of disruption

But a few distractions during the day are harmless and practically unavoidable, right? Not so much. All those minutes wasted here and there turn into hours that come with a high price tag if you're your own boss. When you're an entrepreneur, your time is your most valuable asset. When you're an entrepreneur, your time is your most valuable asset, and one of your most important responsibilities is being a good steward of that asset. Every minute frittered away on Facebook, YouTube, blogs and even mundane chores is a minute you're not spending innovating, selling or shipping. In reality, no matter how dedicated you are to your business or how deep your passion runs for what you do, staying focused can be a challenge. Between phone calls, e-mail, social media sites and routine daily to-dos, your attention is constantly being pulled in many directions at once. However, it is possible to quiet your mind and rein in the distractions, but to do so, you must recondition your brain. If you're serious about increasing your productivity, you must commit to a structured regimen of daily practice in regaining your focus, just as you would if you were training to improve your speed and endurance in running or cycling.

The Pomodoro Technique

One of the best methods for cultivating your powers of concentration is the Pomodoro Technique. In a nutshell, this technique is a time management tool that breaks the working day into units of 25 minutes called "Pomodoros." Use the clock as a time cop and obey it relentlessly. To get started, all you need is a timer, a notebook and a pen. When your day begins, make a list of all the tasks you must accomplish in order of priority. Set the timer for 25 minutes, and start working on the task at the top of the list. Focus on this task and only this task until the timer chimes. When the timer goes off, mark an x next to that task on your list and give yourself a short break of no more than three to five minutes. The purpose of this break is to let your mind rest and disconnect, so don't keep thinking about what you were just working on, and don't get wrapped up in responding to e-mail or returning a call from a client. Instead, relax, get up and stretch, read an article on your favorite blog or take care of one item on your personal to-do list. After every four Pomodoros, take a longer break of 15 to 30 minutes. Then simply repeat this cycle until your workday is done. The key to success in implementing the Pomodoro Technique is to use the clock as a time cop and obey it relentlessly. Be sure to set the timer for breaks, too, so that you're not tempted to extend them beyond the allotted time. However, always keep in mind that breaks are equally important as the 25-minute Pomodoros, so don't work through them in your eagerness to finish your task, either. The breaks are there for a reason – to allow you just enough of a mental refresher to keep you razor-sharp without getting sucked into a vortex of distraction.

Put time back on your side

As you adapt to this new daily rhythm, you'll be amazed how quickly the clock ceases to be your enemy and becomes your ally. You'll also realize how many times throughout the day you habitually allow yourself to be interrupted by distractions like Facebook and Twitter just because they're there. Reclaiming lost time in your day is critical to getting the most out of your business growth efforts.With practice, it will be easy to tune anything and everything out for 25 minutes. Knowing there is a break ahead is a great source of motivation. When you're tempted to check e-mail or see who's on IM, look at the clock first, and make yourself stick it out, knowing you never have more than 25 minutes until the next break. The Pomodoro Technique is much more than just an exercise in self-discipline; it's also an invaluable resource to help you take control of your time and boost your productivity. Because you keep a running daily log of how many Pomodoros it takes to accomplish each task, you will develop a very clear picture of how long each activity takes, which will help you estimate and prioritize projects more effectively so that you don't find yourself racing to meet deadlines. You can also identify tasks that are absorbing a disproportionate amount of your time and develop more efficient ways of getting them done. Reclaiming lost time in your day is critical to getting the most out of your business growth efforts. When your focused work time is more productive and your downtime is kept in check, you'll be amazed at how much you can accomplish when you quite literally put your mind to it.

Further reading

To learn more about the Pomodoro Technique, download the free instructional e-book at  www.pomodorotechnique.com.

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