Five questions to ask before redesigning your construction company website

So it’s time for a website redesign. Your existing site hasn’t changed much over the years and you’ve just been hit by the realisation that it’s the first thing people see when researching you. Suddenly it’s become important! Pritesh Patel of Pauley Creative runs through the five questions you should always be able to answer before going any further.

A recent survey by Hubspot found that 68 per cent of marketers had redesigned their websites within the previous 12 months. The extent of what they meant by ‘redesign’ wasn’t made clear, however. If ‘redesign’ meant a complete redesign then I think that number was quite high. Another interesting point: when asked ”who initiated the activity” 30 per cent of respondents indicated that it was their CEO or senior executives.

As a marketer or business owner you may look at your website every day. It’s easy to become familiar with it. Your prospects, on the other hand, may only visit it once, and so will only see your information and content one time. I wrote a blog post a while back on how to drive loyal traffic to your website. Complete redesigns are sometimes the easy thing to do. But are they always the right thing?

Here are my top five questions to ask yourself (and others) before redesigning your company website:

1.	What problem am I trying to solve? Give serious consideration to your answer. Why do you even have a website? What is it's job? To create more leads? To engage with customers? To grow your database? Whatever the objective, make sure that any changes you make are geared towards that one goal. Many websites try to be all things to all people, and end up failing to be anything to anyone. Examine who comes to your site, how they get there, and whether or not it then fulfils their needs. Analyse your traffic using Google Analytics, and then make small adjustments often. This is the best way to measure your website’s effectiveness.
2.	Is my problem ‘design’ or ‘content’? Most of your website’s visitors are looking for some sort of information. Your website’s design helps them make a judgement about your company as soon as they land on a page. You have less than a second to make a good impression, otherwise they will leave to find a website that looks professional, well designed and reassures them that they have come to the right place. Poor design may convey an amateurish or unprofessional image, but content is king. Visitors want good information that isn’t available elsewhere. Content is what actually converts visitors into leads, while design helps the process of converting by taking visitors on a journey through your website.
3.	What will returning visitors say when they see a new site? Don’t you just hate it when changes are made to news websites, making it difficult to find your favourite sections? Or when Facebook changes the layout of their newsfeed? Admit it. Everyone hates it. So when redesigning your website, consider your returning visitors and the things that keep bringing them back to your website. Make sure you keep them happy by making sure the things they keep coming back for are still easy to find and accessible.
4.	Have I tested everything / different elements? Have you tested that form on the Contact page? Is it too long? Have you tried to make the ‘download brochure’ call-to-action button/icon bigger or maybe have it in red or blue? Have you experimented with images of real people rather than stock images? Or even your product in situ as opposed to a CAD rendering? I personally don’t think a complete redesign is necessary until you have tested as much as you can on your existing website. By making small changes often and tweaking elements within the website, and then monitoring closely what happens, you should end up with a perfectly well-oiled website which is converting visitors into leads.
5.	Have I questioned my website visitors? What percentage of your website visitors complete the journey you intended for them? If your website features a product selector tool, do you know whether visitors are using it to actually select or shortlist products? Surveying your visitors and asking them questions is the best way to really get an idea if it’s time for a redesign or a restructure. You can use a survey tool like KissInsights to make sure you ask the right question of the right visitor at the right time. For example, the Pauley Creative website includes a survey which asks the question, “what shall we write about next?” but which only pops up and asks it of returning visitors. Why? Well we want them to keep coming back and so only want provide information that’s relevant. Other questions such as, “what could we do to make this page more useful” or “for what reason did you visit this site” will help you to understand how visitors use your site and why they visit it in the first place. Of course there are lots of other questions you could (and should) ask before embarking on a redesign, but these five provide the key to identifying why you should even consider it.

Once you have had your website redesigned, make sure that potential visitors hear about its unique and useful content by promoting it on- and offline to the right audience.

Editor’s note:

RIBA Insight offers banner advertising opportunities across theNBS.com, ribaproductselector.com and ribacpd.com, giving you access to thousands of construction industry specifiers each month. All banner advertisements appear above the fold in a choice of three positions, linking directly back to your website.

 

Author Pritesh Patel is Digital Marketing Manager at Pauley Creative, a digital marketing agency specialising in the construction industry. Read the original article.

 

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