Web Site Redesign – from stagnation to rejuvenatio

Web Site Redesign – from stagnation to rejuvenation



Copyright 2002 Herman Drost



When surfing the Web these days, you often come across web

sites that suffer from stagnation – they look old, obsolete or

appear to have been designed by an amateur. Your web site needs

continuous improvement to capture and engage your visitor's

attention. If not, they can easily click away to your

competitor's site.



12 steps to prevent web site stagnation



1. Define a clear purpose – when visitors arrive at your site,

they should immediately know what your site is all about.

You should introduce this in your first paragraph. A graphic

may help to supplement your explanation.



2. Create a clear theme throughout your site – as time goes by,

you may add things to your web site that has nothing to do with

your original theme. You hope it will attract more visitors.

This may be in the form of banners or links from other popular

sites. Don't do it! Why?



This only seeks to distract people from the focus of your site.

Instead, reevaluate your site's content and overall design.



3. Provide valuable content – "content is king" on the Net.

People are looking for easily accessible information about your

product or service. Your homepage should entice visitors to dig

deeper into your web site. Sometimes you are too close to your

web site, that you can't see what changes are needed to improve

it.

Get other people to visit your web site and ask them for their

honest feedback. Based on this, make the appropriate changes.



4. Harmonize text and graphics – recent sites I've visited, had

hard to read text (they used the same font as they would for

printed media). Sometimes sites have all their text capitalized.

Others have a graphic that takes up most of the page, making the

web page slow loading or the text rolls onto the graphic.



Create your web pages where the background colors of your web

page are lighter than the text (black text on a white background

is still the easiest to read). Create graphics that enhance the

appearance of the page and support the content.





5. Create site interactivity – a static web site won't allow

visitors to interact with your web site. Because the Web, is an

interactive medium, create ways in which your visitors will

either want to return or be invited to return. Here are a few

ideas to get you started:



Write an informative newsletter – create a subscription box on

your web site with a link to a sample of your newsletter. In

your newsletter you can invite them to new products and services

on your site.



Run a contest – include a contest form on your web page and

invite them to return to see if they are the winner.



Create a poll or survey – you could have a weekly or monthly

poll or survey, then publish the results at the end of period.



Create a chat room – invite people for one hour a week to chat

with you about your area of expertise. This may become something

they look forward to.



Give something away – people love freebies. If you do a search

for "freebies" on google you will get 1,400,000 sites that offer

free products or services. Make sure the product fits with your

target audience.



6. Simple navigation – sites that make it difficult to find the

information you need, or make it hard to get back to the

homepage, lose visitors very quickly. Other sites have multiple

navigation systems that only create confusion.





Create a navigation system that is simple, quick and makes it

easy to guide the visitor through the site. This can be in the

form of text links or graphical links that are consistent on

every page.



7. Build trust and credibility – if your web site doesn't give

the impression that you can be trusted because you make

unbelievable claims, you will lose visitors fast. Here are some

ideas:



Ask for testimonies from satisfied customers Give a guarantee

with your service or product. Provide well-written content

Create an "about us" page to give folks a little background of

whom they are doing business with. List any professional

associations you are associated with.



8. Web page popularity – examine your site statistics and see

which pages most of your visitors are landing on. If most of

your visitors are entering the less significant pages of your

web site, you may want to change the keywords of your best pages

to drive web traffic to them instead.



9. Site loading speed – this is the most important factor in

having folks visit your web site. If it is slow loading (more

than 10 seconds with a 56K modem), your visitors will click away

to your competition. Here are some ideas to speed up and cut

down on loading times:



Optimize your graphics so they are small in size. Don't use too

many graphics on one page. Clean up any bloated or unnecessary

html. Don't overdo your site with flash, java applets, java

script, and dynamic html



10. Research your competition – constantly keep an eye on your

competition for new technologies and new ways to communicate

with your audience. Take a look at the design and keywords they

are using. If they rank high in the search engines, this will

give you some ideas of how you can improve your own site.



11. Keyword density – analyze the amount of keywords you are

using in each of your web pages. Try to aim for a keyword

density on your site from 3-20%. This will give you a good

range. You can analyze your keyword density by using these

online tools:



http://www.keyworddensity.com


http://www.keywordcount.com



Don't repeat your keywords more than 3 times. Use different

keywords for each web page.



12. Find a good web designer to redesign your site – look for a

design company that knows all the facets of the web site design

and marketing phases. This ensures you will have a web site that

sells (not just a nice design).



Read "How to choose a web designer"