3 Steps to a Website Redesign That Drives Real Business Results
Redesigning your website is about more than aesthetics, changing the fonts and adding some video - it’s a chance to change the relationship your customers have with your brand. Your website is open 24/7, available from anywhere opportunity to show you understand and value your customers. A compelling value exchange is critical to business success.
Our 3-step website redesign checklist allows us to deliver results that add value to your bottom line regardless of your digital maturity.
The timeless design principle, “Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context” from architect Eliel Saarinen is as true for digital experiences as physical ones. Start out by mapping your customer journey.
By understanding this larger context you can understand the role of your website - what you need it to do for your customers.
Not only one of Stephen Covey’s habits of highly effective people, desired outcomes are a highly effective way to think about your website redesign. Beginning with the end in mind - knowing what we want to achieve - provides us with the criteria we need to assess our progress. At Chartis we start by defining tangible business goals for design work - commonly revenue increase or cost reduction. We can then build a measurement framework to understand our progress towards those goals. For example, revenue increase can be influenced by Average Order Volume (AOV) and the design decisions we make to frame our product choices can increase AOV.
In our work with Mott Corporation, we prioritize design choices based on influencing lead quality as measured by decrease in time from contact to contract. Presenting website content in the most digestible format increases the customers’ ability to self-service initial product research leading to more informed sales conversations. Describing the results we want before we start designing product solutions allows us to prioritize decisions and know when we’ve succeeded in creating an efficient end-to-end customer experience.
Think, make, test is a LeanUX approach championed by Josh Seiden. At Chartis we adapt this approach to combat two typical challenges to design investment - fear of failure and pace of change. What if we knew the investment we are making in website redesign will pay off? What if we can see results in weeks rather than months? A think, make test approach allows us to have those answers. We start with what we know from steps one and two to design and prototype targeted solutions. We can then test their effectiveness live onsite via A/B testing or with our target customers via usability testing.
In our work with a B2B SaaS company we were able to de-risk design decisions and roll out successful solutions in a rapid deployment cycle based on testing with target customers. We were able to evolve the experience based on data - data tied to our measurement framework and the outcomes that added the most value to our client’s business.
Don’t design to follow trends. Design to add value to your bottom line through improved relationships with your customers. Your website is a key touch point in that relationship. It adds the most value when you are clear on its role, how to measure its success, and how to scale it effectively.