Redesigning Your Older Web Design
After your site is up and running, there will come a time when simple updates will not reflect what you want to communicate to users, and you may decide to embark on a redesign of your website. Use the tips below to organize yourself to incorporate your website redesign with minimal inconvenience to you and your customers.
Make certain that you own your domain name. If it turns out you don't own your domain name, you can usually arrange to purchase it from your web hosting company for a small fee.
Make sure you have copies of your individual file names for your site and additional extensions for different pages such as ordering pages.
Your file pages will likely have to be updated as part of your web redesign as well. It's a good idea to keep the same pages you had and to incorporate your new material into those pages rather than deleting your older file names.
If you decide that you're not going to use a specific old file name, make sure you provide a redirect facility for users who accidentally reach the inactive page.
Take some time and consider what you'd like to change about your current website.
If you haven't done so before, as part of your ongoing website management, you should keep notes about your likes and dislikes about your website divided into functional and aesthetic issues.
Consider what you'd like to replace older images with if you're updating any of the images on your website.
Make certain that you have the rights to use and publish whatever images you want to incorporate into your new website. Copyright is an ongoing issue with material on the Internet and you don't want to risk inadvertently or intentionally misusing someone's copyrighted material.
Go into a meeting to consult with a web designer with the idea of being flexible in order to maximize the benefits you can achieve from a web designer's expertise. While you may want a specific functionality or feature on your website, there may be legitimate reasons that an expert will inform you about that make the feature less attractive, such as its impact on the time it will take your site to download.
Make announcements to your customers and other visitors to your site about your planned and/or executed new website in order to use your new web design as a marketing resource for your business.
Consider thanking your web designer on an announcement page for your new web design as a genuine expression of the appreciation you have for businesses and individuals who help you with your business.
Thanking individuals or businesses that help you with your new website is an effective way of making sure they have skin in the game in that a good site will reflect well on their skills as well as on your business.
There is no definite date for how frequently you should redesign your website, but it is one of those things that you'll want to do periodically. Use the tips above to organize your redesign so that your new website informs your new customers the way you hope it will.
