How do you re-design your website with your customers in mind?

5 Ideas on How you can Redesign your Website with your Customers in mind?

We all find change difficult, so redesigning your website may not be a priority. You may ask, I run a profitable company, we’ve been in business for 20-30+ years, so why should I change anything!?

The answer is a lot has changed in that time. Today, your customers - more than ever-crave a personal relationship with you. The tendency is to think that customers want to know what you do - information that you can more accurately represent on a business card. But, surely, your website is meant to be more than a business card?

Designed right with your customers in mind-your website will generate more leads; the best thing is- these leads will turn into customers, and from there- these customers will turn into your biggest fans!

1) Content

What's a website without content? When people visit your site, the first thing they'll expect to see is an effectively-crafted landing page, a well-written blog, or an informative pillar page. However, when you visit some websites, and I've visited a few, you'll find most of their content is on their resources page.

Ask yourself, "do my customers have the time to sift through my resources page for content that answers their particular query or problem?"

Think of your customers’ journey; there is the awareness stage, the consideration stage, and the purchasing stage. All content on your website needs to fit the context of a particular customer journey. For example, customer needs at the awareness stage will be different from those at the consideration stage.

You'll also need to have content carefully tailored for all your buyer personas. Have in mind that: a VP of sales needs will be different from the needs of a Director of Manufacturing!

But if you want a website that generates” more sales-ready leads, you'll need value-added bottom-of-the-funnel offers “that outperform ‘contact us’, ‘speak with a rep’, ‘download our free trial’…”

2) User Experience

When you've put the work in to generate more traffic to your site, the last thing you'll want is for prospects to hit the eject button!. So, you'll need to make sure that they stay on your site to explore your content, click on a content offer, or to fill out forms. To accomplish that, you'll need to ask yourself, “what do I want my prospects to feel, see, view, or read when they get to my website”.

3) Call To Action

Call to Actions or CTA buttons should be used strategically to guide users towards conversion. The most common CTAs include: start a trial, download a webinar, book a consultation, etc…

Adding CTAs that are clear and draw the eye will improve the user experience of your website. Studies demonstrate that CTAs that are clear and attractive have high conversion rates. Here are some tips for effective CTAs:

• The Color: colored Call to Action Buttons are more likely to capture the attention of users and help make them stand out. When choosing a color for a CTA, make sure it contrasts with the color scheme of your website.
• Avoid Passive Verbs: text for any CTA should be subtle, but action-oriented. The objective of the CTA is to guide the user to take the desired action.
• Short and Concise: make sure your CTA button text is short and concise and under five words.

4) Website Pages with Value

I love Hotjar’s marketing analogy that compares website redesign to remodeling a house. It resonates with me because I wake up every morning to the knocking of a hammer and drilling from the apartment below us! Would you swing a Thor-Like Hammer in random directions knocking down every wall in sight, before first double-checking that the walls of your home are load-bearing?

So, why would you treat redesigning your website any differently?

Before redesigning your website, you'll need to have clarity on what webpages need extra care, and which pages you'll need to rebuild.

One approach you can use is “to investigate the relationship between traffic to your website and conversions”. And depending on the connectedness between the two, each website page will likely “fall into one of the following 4 categories”:

• High Conversion Rates, High Traffic: these are pages that add value to your website, so handle these with the most care. As Hotjar marketing says “approach these pages with caution and 10X more care when compared with everything else.”
• High Conversions, Low Traffic Webpages: despite the low traffic rate, these pages can still lead to conversions. The advice from Hotjar is “to handle these website pages with care because you don't want to break anything that may be working”.
• High Traffic, Low Conversions: The other way around is when you have plenty of traffic, but low conversion rates, there is -evidently- something not quite right "conversion-wise". With this in mind, you’ll have more of a creative license to experiment without risking the conversion rate dropping.
• Low Traffic, Low Conversions: whatever tweaks you make to these webpages won't be noticed, nor do you need to be too concerned about risking a drop in the conversion rate. So go ahead, don your creativity cap and make changes that have every potential of increasing engagement!

5) Hooks and Obstacles

Knowing what your valuable webpages are, and which need to be re-designed-is a terrific starting point. However, there is much more to do. You may have an idea of who is visiting webpages and why, but you still have gaps in your knowledge.

At this point in your redesign project, there are two gaps that you need to fill: you'll want to know what persuades or helps customers and what barriers prevent them from completing an action. Hotjar marketing calls these your hooks and obstacles.

Taking a deeper dive into investigating your hooks and obstacles will help you form a clear picture of:

• What's effective, and what needs improvement on individual pages.
• What are the obstacles to people converting?
• What visitors like, and what they don't, about the overall experience of your website.
• Where people get into a jam and experience problems.

If you don't investigate the relationship between customer behavior and your website performance, or understand what needs re-designing, and what you don't need to touch- you'll repeat the same mistakes with your re-designed website.

How to redesign your website in a way that delights your customers?

There is no doubt that there is a lot to think about when redesigning your website. Firstly, ask yourself, is my website just a business card to say what we do, or is my website designed to help my customers?

Today, there are too many companies that tend to think what we do is more important than why we do it. Whether you have an established name in your industry or you are starting your business, it is crucial to ask what do I want my prospects to feel, see, view, or read when they get to my website.

And when your prospects reach your website, will they have to spend more time than necessary searching for answers to their pain points; if they do, they won't stick around for long!

The next question is which of your pages have high rates of traffic and high conversion rates. Knowing what pages to redesign or rebuild and which you'll not want to touch- prevents you from making the same mistakes twice.

Being prepared by having a plan is a big part of the redesign. However, this all part of a continuing process. The rates of traffic and conversion rates to web pages will change with time. So continually re-testing from-time-to time is crucially important.

By doing this, you'll continue to meet customers' needs. And you'll ensure that more of your prospects will turn into valued customers, then into your biggest fans, taking your company to new heights of success!