Revamp or Redesign of website required? Part 1 of several.

So you are pretty sure that your business website needs a lot of work, the question is how much work and can a close look at your existing website give you the results that you need without spending a lot of time and money on a completely new build.

There are some factors which will necessitate the designing and building of a brand new website.

These will include some or all of the following items:

• A major change in technology. The way in which websites are viewed by potential clients has changed enormously over the last few years. The dominance of smartphones mean that browsing is done using one of these devices and your website needs to respond to this.
• There has been a major change in the corporate identity of your company.
• The services your company provides have changed greatly.
• The markets which your company targets has changed.
• A website that is regularly maintained works best and if this is your priority a CMS (content management system) is essential. Unfortunately websites built using html will not allow this flexibility and so a brand new website design and build will be required.

However if your requirements for a new website do not fall under any of the criteria listed above the best place to start with is your existing site. Try looking at how it works and feels with new eyes, pretend that you are a potential client viewing the website for the first time, even better get someone unrelated to your business to do the same thing, you might be surprised with what they come up with.  You will probably find that they will pick up on areas of difficulty within the site that you have not even considered.

While the look and feel of of a website is important the content within and how this can be accessed by clients is the where your priorities should lie.  All areas of the website should be tackled, simply adding a new “skin” to existing content is superficial and won’t really add much to how the site works for you or potential clients.  Remember you need to make it as easy as possible for clients to navigate your website, if it is difficult to find the information they are looking for they will simply move on to a competitors website and find it there.