While it’s great that you just have a replacement and much nicer website, does it deliver as you expected? Sometimes entrepreneurs are so happy that their site has been revised and updated to provide a fresh, clean look, but has your website design company delivered results? At the end of the day, your site just looks better and isn’t all that important when your new site performs better.
So how do you know if the location is performing better?
Frankly, this has always been a difficult subject. Most people want to believe that the company they need to perform a selected task is fulfilling that task. Once they discover that this is often not the case, there are often emotions related to the reaction, such as anger, outrage, or perhaps shame because they feel cheated.
Therefore, in some cases, a company will simply “handle” it rather than investigate it, which can create a conflict that many of us simply don’t have time to long for or long for. But let’s be honest; that’s just not fair.
Instead, from the first day, you should actively review your site during a restart to ensure that you not only get what you bought, but also that your business is not in a worse position than before, no matter how beautiful it is dressed.
Using Analytics Examining data from your website before redesign is a critical step in the process. Google Analytics is a great free tool that you can easily use. Ideally, you have your data available because the company you are hiring has used it to help within the design process not only strengthen existing weaknesses but also strengthen your strengths.
That data also provides a solid analytical baseline of expectations for the new site, as it should perform better in key metrics than it currently supports your business goals.
If you haven’t kept track of things as you should, this is often not the top of the planet as you still keep track of how you are currently doing and sometimes use historical data in your benchmark reports.
Track from Day 1 – Ideally, you want to start tracking data from the first day of the reboot so you determine your baseline. If you have statistics before you make a quick comparison, but remember that you just won’t always see an immediate bump. After a few months, it’s time to start the general analysis and identify issues and problems, in addition to a much better understanding of “Before and After”.
Stats to Track – These are all essential data points you want to map to be successful: visitors, leads visitors, time on site, bounce rate, average page views per visit, 404 errors, qualified leads, keyword analysis, new blog subscribers / newsletter / etc, social statistics, conversions, backlinks and website speed. There are many other good metrics to keep track of, but these are basic principles that should apply to almost any business.
Using Heat Mapping – Ideally, you should discover heat mapping after your site has been live for a few weeks. The time delay is to catch up to the initial user test period, called UAT, where people click everything to find out where things have moved. Heat mapping shows where people usually click, indicating where their attention is also drawn. Designers can only guess at user behavior, while the heat map indicates this, which can be surprising when people go where you didn’t expect them.
An important thing to think about is how your site normally performs compared to the information you view. For example, if your business is strongest in the fall and winter, confirm that you are not comparing your February data to April, as that is a scenario from apples to oranges.
Compare the data
What is a cheap drop off once you have redesigned your website? Usually sites see an average of 5-8% fewer visitors over a short period of time. This first drop is assumed acceptable because your site is being crawled and therefore the rankings are slightly modified and the changes made are supported. That is certainly a problem needs to be addressed immediately by looking at common problem areas.
Common problem areas
Redirects – this is an obstacle if redirects are not completed correctly. Not only do they send users to the new pages, but they also notify a search engine to rank the new page instead of the old one. If you use WordPress, you’re in luck because they need a handy redirect plugin.
Deleted Pages – Sometimes when pages are deleted, there can also be a content gap, which can affect the rankings successively.
Copy changes – once you change your copy, which often happens with a replacement site design, you risk losing rankings because Google and other engines re-evaluate the relevance of the page to the topic.
New Architecture – If you have thoroughly revised the design and structure of your site, people may experience increasing pain as people relearn the way navigate the location. In addition, Google has a classification method and page values are often lowered, which lowers their score in program rankings.
Robots.txt File – If this file is not updated correctly, it can prevent your site from being crawled, which obviously impairs your ranking ability. In some cases if your website is performing poorly, it is thanks to correctable errors that are quite common with a replacement launch.
The Bottom Line
The bottom line is that once you pay tons of cash for redesigning a website, you need to ensure that your website design company delivers results. The easiest way to do this is to analyze your website data and compare key metrics before and after the change. Although some drop off is often expected as your total number is lower after making minor adjustments and adjustments during the first month, the reason for the drop is likely to be that the corporate did not get the results it said they could.
