How do you redesign your site?

To save time and money, you need to know exactly what you want your redesign to accomplish. Is it to make your site look and perform up to modern standards? Attract a new group of visitors? The more specific (and realistic) your goals, the better.

Your goals should also be a group decision. Incorporate representatives from all the different fields within your company: marketing, sales, technical specialists, IT, accounting, customer service, executives—even HR might have something to add. Your site is a microcosm of your entire brand, so it should reflect every aspect.

Even if you’re just doing a periodic update, it’s always worthwhile to check user data. For starters, this could reveal problems you didn’t even know existed, but also you should know which changes to prioritize over others.

Once your know your goals, you can conduct more constructive tests to determine which changes solve the problems most effectively. Again we’ll mention A/B testing (which you can set up yourself online through services like Optimizely), but there are also other ways to get inside your customers’ heads:

Surveys—You can easily add a customer survey to your existing site and listen to what your visitors want changed, in their own words.
Heat maps—A kind of user test, heat maps show you which areas of your site screen visitors interact with most. This offers valuable insight into screen layout, navigation, use of images, conversion
strategies—pretty much everything on your site.
Professional assessment—You can simply hire design experts to look at your site and tell you what you should change and how… although this is one of the more expensive options.

Last, before you move forward, double check with your SEO team and see if there’s room for improvement. Check the performance of your current keywords and see if any new ones show potential.

2. Decide who to hire
More than just what you want, you also have to consider what’s best for the company budget. Among the choices below, which would be the most realistic option for your company:

Internal
If you already have in-house web designers and/or developers, see if they’re up to the task. Keep in mind that not all designers are web designers, so this might be out of their league. Also, depending on the scope of the redesign, they might be too busy, but you can always hire a freelance designer to share the workload with them.

Agencies
This is the option for people who want to be less involved in the process—more like a handoff and wait. A good design agency will have a staff of specialists, though, so each aspect of your site should be handled, depending on their quality. The downside of agencies is that they’re the most expensive choice, so if prices are a concern, you might want to choose a cheaper option.

Freelancer
Hiring a freelance designer is the ideal middle route between handling the redesign yourself and using an agency. You get the same design skill of an agency, but at a fraction of the cost. The trick is to find a freelance designer who matches the style you’re aiming for, so use our search tool to filter out designers by which industry they specialize in, their skill level and more.

Design contest
Commissioning a design contest is an alternative method to hiring a freelancer for people who like to “see it before they choose.” In a design contest, you fill out a quick brief explaining what you’re looking for and any other pertinent details. Next, designers from all over the world submit samples based on what you filled out. Then, you choose the finalists and give them notes to further hone in on what you want. Last, you choose the design you like best. It’s worth noting that this is a great way to get your visual concept down, but you may need to do some additional work beyond the scope of the original contest to design your entire site. You can get started with your website redesign content here.

No matter which avenue you choose, you’ll also need to consider how you get your web design developed. Some agencies offer development in their services, but regardless you can always hire a freelancer if you don’t have anyone capable in-staff.

3. Design process
From your end, the design process is pretty easy. Depending on how much or how little you want to be involved, you can choose how often to check in with your designer. But for the most part, the project is now in the hands of whomever is designing your new site.

Of course, you can always give notes throughout the process to guide the designer in the right direction. Just be sure to communicate everything you want up front to avoid unnecessary delays and misconceptions.

You can read more about this process in our ultimate guide to web design, but to give you an idea of what to expect, here’s a brief overview of the steps:

Wireframing—a rough outline of the proposed design
Look and feel—setting the right atmospheric tone, depending on your brand and goals
Creating the page template—laying the groundwork for the final design
Coding—your developer builds the design
Fill in content—you and/or your designer add the specific images, words, etc. into the template
User testing—see how your users react to your new design and catch any mistakes

How long the design process takes varies, depending on the amount and changes that need to be made and their severity. If you don’t have a lot of time, you can usually pay extra for overtime.

Takeaway: The difference redesigning your website can make

Everyone loves a makeover story, right? We recently had a massive website redesign on our platform that shows just how much of a difference redesigning your website can make.

Crewsware Software, Inc., came to us because they wanted to expand their client base into new territories, with a secondary goal of shortening the amount of time their current clients had to spend on their site for convenience.

After commissioning a design contest, they chose the entry from our designer Wuxo as the winner.