The key to keeping a competitive edge, as well as to the overall branding and success of a company, is an attractive business website. Redesigning your company website can be a daunting task, even with the best designers and developers to assist you. When initiating a redesign of your company website, consider these factors and review all with a professional website designer:
- Know Your Target Audience
The goal of a business website is to communicate the assets of your company to an audience who may not know it exists, but recognizes their need for your products and services. Your logo, the website content, the navigation structure, and images should all articulate the core strengths of your organization in a clear manner, and help the viewer understand why your company is superior to competitors. Understanding your target audience and communicating effectively with them is a high priority in a successful website redesign. - Use Only Quality Graphic Assets
It may be tempting to use outdated logos or amateur photography on your updated business website; however the results are typically disappointing to both the business owner and viewers. Redesign of your company website creates a great opportunity to refresh a dated company logo or have a professional photographer shoot your offices, take quality head shots of principals, or capture recent projects that represent your best work. - Do Your Research
Before meeting with a designer to discuss your business website redesign project, it is helpful to have a short list of websites you like to review with them. These sites can be in any area from news to competitors in your field. When you review these sites with a website designer, be prepared to discuss what you like about them, such as use of colors, fonts, interactive elements, and presentation of the content. These cues are very helpful as the creative process of designing a new web identity for your company begins. - Content Rules
Business websites often rely on content to help new customers locate them through search engines. Content is considered “relevant” by a search engine when it contains valid information and incorporates the terms people commonly use when searching for the products or services on the Internet. If you do not plan to initiate a pay-per-click advertising campaign in tandem with the new website launch, ask your website designer to recommend a writer who has an understanding of creating optimized content as well as crafting appropriate meta tags to help organic search rankings of your redesigned website. - Maintain Your Appearance
Keeping content on your business website fresh is important to search engine rankings as well as to keeping existing and potential customers up to speed on happenings in your company or industry. You can update content through a CMS (content management system), through a company blog, or through email newsletters that are archived on your website. Discuss content maintenance strategies with the designers of your updated business website and be sure you can support their suggestions to best use the tools available.
Redesigning your company website can help build new business and introduce your company to new customers day in and day out. By preparing well for a website redesign, you maximize the value your company reaps from a fresh web presence. Contact Southern Web Group at 404-848-9440 for more information on how to get started on a business website design today.
