What You Can Expect from the Website Redesign Process

Redesigning a website can sound daunting if you aren’t sure what the process all entails. We want to take that fear/confusion away. So, here’s our break-down for you.

What You Can Expect from the Website Redesign Process

1. Information Gathering

Before your designers can start revamping your website, they are going to have lots of questions for you. They’ll need to look through your current site to see what kinds of information and pages you currently have. You’ll need to define your target audience so that your designers know what kinds of content they should be creating to best reach the people you want to reach. You’ll also want to share with your designers who your top competitors are so that they have a better idea of what your industry looks like. If you have your own opinions, you can share the things you like and don’t like about your current website… That way your designer can try to implement some of these ideas if they work well with the website design and target audience.

With all of this information, your designer has a starting place. Then, that person is going to do further research into your industry, any important keywords that your website will need and your target audience — behaviors and demographics. With all this information, the designer and development team can create the best possible website for you.

2. Planning

From here, your designer and the development team are going to start creating a plan. This generally starts with figuring out the information structure that your site is going to have. For example, does it make the most sense for Information X to fall under the “Products & Services” page or under the “About Us” page. And, they do that for every piece of information that you have on your site. They can then delve deeper into their SEO strategies as well.

With a basic structure of the future site, the designer can begin to create a mock-up of what the site is going to look like. This is basically just a picture of what the site is going to look like. At RedMoxy, we create this mock-up using Photoshop so we can get a detailed idea of what the site should look like. This way, the developers can build their code off of what the image looks like. Make sense?

And, then just like that, a schedule is made. Note: It is very important that you give your development team a launch date so that they know how much time they have to complete your site. No launch date means that the project will likely get pushed off if something else with a time constraint comes up.

3. Designing

And, now, it’s time to really get down to business. During the design phase, your content is going to be created. A content writer or team of content writers will develop the written content for your website pages based on your current website’s content and your target audience. Your designer will then start creating graphics and icons for your site if the research said that that was the way to go. Then, these web design elements can be added to the Photoshop file to flesh it out and give the developers a more complete idea of what the site is meant to look like.

4. Developing

The final step in the design process is the development part of it. This step is the most technical and involves developing the technology to make your site run well. This is when your site begins to come to life. For example, if buttons are meant to be clickable that will happen here. If an icon on your site is meant to light up when it is hovered over, that can happen here as well. This is also when the template for the site gets cleaned up and details get tweaked.

Your new site will then get tested and touched-up and then passed around for perhaps a second or third opinion. Some design teams include their clients into this part and some do not. Ask your designer about this in your initial meeting if you aren’t sure what their policy is.

Related posts: Why You Need a Well Designed Website, Misconceptions about Building a Website

And wah-lah, the first design of your website is done! It is a really exciting process, and a new site can make a huge difference for the image of your company. If you want more information about our process and our rates, let us know!