The Successful Website Redesign and ROI: Making a Difference vs. Simply Making it Different

The Successful Website Redesign and ROI: Making a Difference vs

. Simply Making it Different

There are many good reasons to undergo a website redesign, but above all, the most important is to make it a more effective experience for your customers, which directly translates into them taking a desired action. Whether that is buying a product, making a donation, picking up the phone and calling you or filling out an application, the goal is to get them to take that action.

So when it comes time to redesign a website, make sure that you are keeping things in perspective. We all know that a website designed in 2002 is going to look dated, but it's not enough to simply make the website graphics look updated from 2002 to 2010. A lot has happened with best practices in Information Architecture, User Experience, and so much more in the last few years. The goal should be to take these recent developments and create a user experience that successfully achieves much more than a design refresh. Now is the time to make some major changes and set the stage for true return on investment (ROI).

Let your Business Requirements drive the process instead of incorporating them once you've started.

Any good Request for Proposal should be developed from a strong set of Business Requirements for a website upgrade or enhancement. There is almost no exception to this rule. It does not mean that the website redesign should not be flashy or dynamic or engaging to a younger audience. It simply means that the end result must accomplish the organizational challenges it is being created to solve.

Don't rush the design process. A little usability testing goes a long way.

This is also the same idea as "measure twice, cut once." Now that you're going through the time and resource-intensive process of redesigning your website, make sure that the decisions you are making are based on research and best practices, and shy away from subjective decisions (e.g. "I don't like this shade of orange," "I don't like dropdown menus," etc.) Subjective opinions are overcome be a good user experience, so keep that in mind.

If you don't have good analytics in place to help you make educated decisions, it's never too late.

If part of your Website Redesign Request for Proposal includes setting up analytics and benchmarks, please include an initial phase in the project to set them up on your current site. There is no substitute for real numbers. Even getting a few months of analytics from your current site before the redesign is launched is invaluable.

If you already have analytics running, but are not setting goals, event tracking or other items which can help you determine the effectiveness of registration forms, shopping carts or other key actionable items on your site, make sure you put them in place. To make it easier, you can have the same vendor that is redesigning your site put these in place and monitor them for you. This gives the benefit of educating your new vendor about the ins and outs of your current site, and it gets you that data that you desperately need.

Now is the time to put true benchmarks in place.

No matter how well you think you're tracking the user experience on your website, I bet you could do better. See how you answer the following questions:

Are site analytics currently active on your site?

Are you regularly reviewing them and comparing your progress month to month (or even week to week)?

Do you have a clear picture of how users travel throughout your site?

Do you know what the biggest stumbling block to users taking action on your website is?

Which of your marketing efforts are most effective in getting users to take action on your website?

Make sure that you build your new website with tracking and measurement in place from the ground up. Next time around (I know, first things first: let's get through this first redesign!) you will have valuable information that will help you tremendously in your decision-making processes.

Don't know what to put in your Request for Proposal (RFP)? Get help from an expert.

There's no shame in admitting you don't know it all. I certainly make the disclaimer that "I'm no lawyer" all the time because I believe in the importance of having a knowledgeable expert weigh in on important things. Likewise, it's probably not your job to write Website Redesign Request for Proposals all day.

Having seen hundreds, if not thousands, of Requests for Proposal myself I can say that there are good ones and there are terrible ones. The problem with the terrible ones is that the organization that wrote them wants a great website just as much as the one who writes a good one. It's simply a matter of knowing how to speak correctly and accurately about your goals, objectives and technical specifics.

Most of the great RFPs I've seen come across my desk are those which have undoubtedly had some help from either an inhouse expert or a consultant. I would strongly suggest getting this sort of help before embarking on the RFP process. The risk in not doing it is that you might be overlooking something important that will undoubtedly come up in conversations once you've chosen a suitable vendor.

Now it's time to get started.

So as you are readying your organization for your website redesign, make sure to keep all of these things in mind so the next time your organization is considering a website redesign, you have a wealth of information in order to help you make decisions. You will be able to truly quantify the return on investment (ROI) and you will truly make a difference to your company or organization, instead of simply making your website different.

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