The constant drive to progress in design and technology means every website must go through periodic redesigns. Certain design styles go out of fashion, quickly dating your site to a particular period. Coding also gets improved, so you could find your old site is sluggish or incompatible with certain browsers. While the need to occasionally complete a redesign might be clear, how you go about it can be uncertain. Many sites – even large brands – have suffered from a design misstep, while others have benefited from increased conversions and visitor satisfaction. So how can you redesign your site to offer a superior user experience?
Increase Readability
Readability is a major part of user experience, particularly with the rise in mobile device usage. Trying to read an article on a phone can be difficult if the font is small or difficult to read. In most cases, readers will simply leave the site as soon as they encounter a problem. Problems can also occur when there is a lack of paragraphs and subheadings, often leading to a high bounce rate. Finally, it is worth considering how you use colors on the page, avoiding any clashes like a light text font on a light background.
Simplify Navigation
Navigation can be difficult to get right when you have a complex site. A site with numerous categories, particularly with a large product inventory, needs to make navigation as intuitive as possible. The search feature must also be effective, allowing people to find what they want in the fewest clicks. A simple site can reduce the presence of navigation considerably, only including what is absolutely necessary.
Offer an Effortless Experience
You have to work hard to gain attention online, so any irritations can be severely detrimental. One of the biggest site issues is loading times. A redesign could add some visually impressive elements, for example, but this could add additional loading time. Ideally, you should make the site quicker, but at the very least there should be no decreases in loading time. A redesign also offers the chance to audit your site for any error pages or dead links that need updating.
Create a Professional Design
Apart from some rare cases, creating a professional design will provide a better experience for users. Visitors feel more confident when a site has a polished look, particularly if they are making a purchase. The number of options for quality web design has increased considerably in recent years, so an unattractive site can indicate the business is not being maintained. Signs of a quality site can include a quality logo, security seals, a responsive design, smooth scrolling, and professional images.
Run Tests Before Launch
There is no absolute certainty with a redesign, so you want to have all the available data before committing to a finished version. Thankfully, there are now more methods of gaining feedback than ever. Criticue is a community of web developers and business owners who offer feedback on designs. UsabilityHub lets you run individual tests to find out how users respond to an element on your site. UserTesting offers detailed responses, with users recording videos of their first encounter with a page. There are various other testing tools, but you could also just contact your email subscribers for beta testing assistance.
Variations in niche and product type mean there is no guaranteed formula for web design, but many broad elements will usually get results. Simplicity and usability will provide a great experience, while visitors are usually more confident when they see aprofessional design. Of course, complex stores will require a different approach to a simple blog, so don’t choose overly simple or complex structures where they are not appropriate. Ultimately, though, you will only find out what works after testing a redesign on your audience, with statistics and user responses telling you if you have done a good job.
Impower Solutions is a Professional web design company in chennai and leader in transformative visual identity, brand strategy, high-end development, eCommerce and digital marketing.
