What to keep in mind when relaunching your website

When it comes to running a business, you’ll always need a website. Whether you have a physical store or you operate entirely online, your website is essential to help you succeed.

Sometimes, it’s easy to believe that you can start a company on social media. And this may work out for you for a short period of time, but it’s not entirely your own. Any changes made to that social platform can affect your business, and that’s definitely not going to be in your best interest. So, you need to make sure that you have your own site ready to operate from. At first, this may be something that you sort yourself. You can create free sites or even use templates to do something that you have hosted. But before long, you may realize that what you’ve created just can’t cut it and you will have to consider relaunching your website.

Sometimes, you won’t want to make a song and dance about relaunching, but you know that you need to redo things and then get them up and running. But before you dive on in, there are some key things that you should keep in mind. When it comes to your website and getting things into a position where they are as good as they can be, there are a range of elements that come into play. So we’re going to take a look at ten different things you need to think about when you’re doing a relaunch.

Who you’re targeting

First of all, you really need to know who you’re targeting. Maybe the reason you didn’t succeed so well the first time around is that you just set up your site without really thinking about who you’re targeting or what they might want from your site. So, the best way to start when relaunching is to define your target market before you do anything else. When you know exactly what segment of the market you’re aiming at, you can then uncover their needs and preferences that will help you to make decisions on the new design.

What already works

From here, you then need to be able to figure out what is already working out for you. Because not everything about your site will be wrong. Now that you have your customer profile, sit down with your designer, developer, and a marketing expert (even if you are one of those people) and work it out. Highlight the things that have worked for you, so you know what elements to keep in place when relaunching or to simply build upon.

What doesn’t

More importantly, you may also like to really double down on what’s not working. And this can be tough. But you have to be objective, think about the user journey, and work out where your issues are. The more brutal you can be, the better. Because when it comes to developing a redesign that’s going to work, you have to be able to remove or change the things that are letting your site down.

Design options

Now that you’ve identified the strengths and weaknesses of what you have, you’ll want to work with some design options to get things right. To do this, you need to pick a skilled design team, such as Make Me Local, to create options for you. Ideally, they’ll be more than just a designer. It’s important to work with a team that knows how to incorporate everything from the user journey to marketing tactics into your overall design.

Conversion rates

From here, you’ll then want to make sure that you’re focusing on the results you get. Whether you have an online store or a content site, you need to ensure that your conversion rates are where they need to be. Here, landing pages can help. If you’re keen to really improve upon the calls to action or the responses that you want, doubling down on your conversions is essential.

Consistent branding

So you’re working on a killer design and you know it suits your brand and your consumer perfectly. But now you need to stay consistent. There’s nothing more important that brand consistency when you’re trying to build up awareness of your brand. So this is something you have to stick to across social media, email marketing, and more.

SEO

Next up, you should be thinking about your SEO. This is where your SEO specialist or your marketing expert should come in. You’ll want to make the right SEO considerations for your website redesign, particularly if your SEO was strong before. If not, then you may be able to really nail things with the new design going forward.

Advertising that will work for you

From here, you’re then going to want to think about the advertising options that you have. Because redoing your site isn’t always enough. You then need to raise awareness about it. If you know that you have a design that will really engage with your audience, it’s time to then think about how you’re going to get it in front of them. This will form a key part of the next step.

A relaunch strategy

Whilst the work is underway and before everything is ready, you then need to think about your strategy for the relaunch. Are you going to talk about it? Are you going to do a big reveal? Are you going to do a promotion or an offer? Whatever you decide, you really need to make sure that you have a plan in place to raise awareness of the site and to get your audience interesting. Those advertising options will come in handy here, but PR can also be a strong idea.

Supportive marketing

Finally, you’ll then want to make sure that you have a strong marketing plan in place when relaunching. The last thing you want is to really work on things, drum up interest around the launch, and then have things fall flat. Instead, you want to make sure that the momentum only continues to build. So figure out what your marketing plan will be for the next 12 months as a minimum.