6 Major Considerations in Re-Designing Your Web Site.

Copyright © 2004 Mahmood Bashaash
http://www.mahmoodb.com 

Designing a website is a very big step towards running an online business. To have a good website for a successful online business, you have to follow lots of rules and recommendations that are directed by professional eBusiness leaders. From developing a strategy for your website functionality to choosing a domain name and a good web hosting company to website structure, design and content. You can easily find huge amount of articles and white papers on the Internet that helps you step this very important stage of your business successfully. But, regardless of all considerations, there maybe reasons that you decide or have to re-design your website. One big reason is your experience. Every day that you get more involved in your online business and learn new things, you get more near to decision of redesigning your website. It is not a negative step. It is a very important step towards improvement. By taking this step, you would move from one stage to a newer one and so, your online business would grow. To take this very important decision carefully, you should consider many parameters that I have chosen six among of those:
1-Never change design of your website because of your desire. Always consider that your clients and visitors would use your website and you have to consider their needs. If you have no negative feedback from your visitors about your website, there is no urgent need to re-design it. If you have reached to the decision of re-designing your website because you didnt like it, sit and double check your decision. Maybe you waste your time and energy because of a wrong decision.

2-If your website has been live for a long time and you have periodic and current visitors never re-structure the whole body of your website. Visitors get used to find their interests at specific points of your website. For example, they know that the latest news appears in a box at top right of your website. So, they would directly go to that point every time they come to your website. If you move the latest news box to another position, your visitors would become confused and this makes them disappointed.

3-Do not forget that a re-design process should make your website performance better. So, be careful to keep images smaller, reduce JavaScript codes and remove useless flash animations. Visitors expect to access your website with the same performance or better than previous one. If they feel it slower, they would ignore it. There are lots of better websites that they can go to visit.

4-Use your experience and study the behavior of your current visitors to see which parts of your website are more fascinating to your clients. In a re-design process, keep those parts highlight. Consider a better place for them on your new design. Let visitors find them easier than the old website and see them happier from the new website.

5-Text ads are very attractive to visitors and if you use PPC (Pay per Click) systems like Google AdSense, you can even earn money from your website. Text ads need to be placed in a position that not only do not affect the structure of your website badly but also attract visitors to click on them. In the new structure of your website, consider a good place for text ads.

6-Search engines are your websites best friends. Never forget them in a re-design process. Meta tags should be refined. Content of web pages that better meets your business and keyword density considerations. Adding new pages to your website that are well designed and optimized for search engines. Re-naming file names of images and pages to be more attractive to search engines. Alt tags of images. Adding footer. Adding a site map with a link from your home page and removing broken links are major issues that you should consider when re-designing your web pages to be more search engine friendly.

Re-designing of a website is like transforming from an old world to a new one. So, do your best to make the new world better and happier. Clients would feel the growth and maturity of your website when they see it re-designed. This process is somehow risky because the new design may fail to be successful than the previous. So you should be ready for a wave and be armed to be able to handle it.