The internet is ever-changing, always updating, and creating new avenues for users to find their favorite platforms to browse. Where does your website fit in? At ARYU we always suggest after the 3-year mark, it is time to update and redesign your website.
As a Junior Producer at ARYU, I have been learning a lot about what a client can expect when the time comes that they need to revamp their website. The ARYU website, for example, just went through another cycle of updating and redesign: I have gathered a lot of hands-on experience during this process as I have been on the backend whilst seeing the client perspective since it’s the company I work for that is getting the new website. Of course, there are mostly only good things to expect as you are doing the work to improve your website, but there are small bumps in the road that can occur during this process.
When we thought of ways to modernize the ARYU website, I searched for global award-winning websites to see what made them special. The consensus I came to was the previous ARYU site did not utilize animations or fresh, creative ways to present information (while still being user-friendly). These are all things I kept in mind for a mental checklist during the redesign process.
The Good: Better for You & User Experience
Only good can come from taking the steps to modernize your website and make changes to improve anywhere that is lacking. When it came to starting the process for the ARYU redesign, I learned that the end result comes with many good outcomes:
- Better user experience
- Optimizing the mobile experience
- Having a modernized design that brings credibility
- Giving your website an SEO boost
“The Good” is the main focus of this process. Keeping your website updated creates a better user experience as you eliminate any bugs, and unuseful sections, and keep all of the best parts of what your website has to offer. More and more studies are coming out about how most internet users are accessing websites through mobile devices. With that said, it is important your website has the perfect design that looks good on a desktop, but also makes sense to be used for the mobile experience. If a website is difficult to navigate or understand on a mobile device, a user will go elsewhere for whatever information they’re browsing for. Therefore, making matching but separate designs for desktop and mobile browsing on your website is crucial for optimizing the user experience, which will only do you good.
How does having a modernized design bring your website credibility? Imagine you are searching for a company that can renovate homes. Once you search, you click on a site, but it looks like you’re surfing the World Wide Web in 2007. Would that make you trust this company to renovate your home to match the style of a home in 2023? Absolutely not. This analogy applies to any and every company website. If your design and user experience look up to date, it gives the impression that you put the work in to maintain your company’s digital professionalism.
Last to mention is the SEO (Search Enginge Optimization) boosting opportunities when revamping your website. While updating the ARYU website, we had our content writing team redo all of our written content on the website. This opens up the door to utilizing keywords, providing fresh information, and gaining more credibility on your website to help your SEO ranking when your ideal customer is searching for a company in your industry. If you are not ranking well in a search engine, you are not being seen at all. Hence this SEO boost opportunity is a great thing for your business and further business growth.
The Bad: Nobody is Perfect
While this process is full of almost all positives, there are some things I took note of during the steps of the new ARYU site:
- Technical challenges
- Time-consuming
- Creative block
When you make the effort to remain new and fresh, you want to stay up to speed with technology. As mentioned previously, I thought the new ARYU site needed more animation features while doing my research. This created technical challenges while the development team was troubleshooting new techniques that they had not used before. This can make the development process more time-consuming if you are introducing new practices as we did this time around. That is something a client may need to look out for if they have a specific launch date in mind or a deadline for something being updated on their live website.
If you want to give your company a whole new vibe or a new design overall (a new logo, for example) there is the possibility of a creative block during the process if you struggle to find the right fit for a new design. Grabbing inspiration from things you see is always helpful. Before we went into the full-blown design of the new web pages, my boss suggested I made a mood board for how we wanted the layouts to look, how content should be displayed, and where certain animations would go. This prevented any creative block for the design and development team along the way because there was always an outline they could refer to if needed.
If you are thinking it is time to redesign your website, I highly suggest to start collecting and saving ideas you have or examples you find online to create a vision for yourself. If you work with ARYU for your website redesign, providing your personal vision as a client is a helpful asset to keep your company’s voice and appearance present.
The Ugly: Things You May Forget Post-Launch
One of the more laborious things about the redesign process is the broken links that follow. When you create a new sitemap for the redesign of your website there is a chance you remove pages and add pages. With that said, pages that used to exist on your site may be gone, or relocated under a different tab. If a page is relocated for example, that URL needs to be redirected to wherever it will land on the new website. With the amount of pages this may happen to, this process of redirecting becomes tedious.
Additionally, if pages become removed completely, that URL more than likely has to be redirected to the homepage in the case that is ranks on Google, currently. On the other hand, broken links or your domain plus a typo will be assigned to a “404 error” page. Keeping track of all of these changes and what you do with your past site information is strenuous but cannot be an afterthought. This is important in the case that your website’s URLs are mentioned on other websites, shared with people, mentioned in blog posts, etc. You must consider all possibilities with navigating your website and its new content.
What I Have Gathered From This Launch
While working on the launch of this current website for ARYU I have learned there is the good, the bad, and the ugly during a website redesign. In my opinion, roughly three quarters of the journey is “the good” as there are so many benefits to keeping your website up to date and keeping your company ahead of the game amongst your competitors. The remaining quarter that is not the best of the best comes with the lengthy steps along the way to ensure perfection when you push your updated website live.
Putting in the quality time to double (or even triple) check everything you do is key to success when you are putting information online, especially when you want to represent your company in the best light possible. Don’t forget to stay on top of your routine updates for your company website! If you need help with where to get started or to see what you can do with your creative ideas, contact ARYU today!
