For the majority of marketing managers, a website redesign is often on the horizon. Ripping up the old creative, going through iterations until the final new design is chosen and implemented. But just because it’s the way we’ve all being doing it, doesn’t mean it’s right.

Yet, we’re still seeing high profile businesses suffering the consequences, most notably M&S’s £150m website redesign disaster in 2014 which reportedly resulted in an 8.1% drop in sales and share price dip.

Why are website redesigns so deadly?

Website redesigns change thousands of variables all at once; copy, imagery, placement, process etc. and therefore the overall result to your online conversion and revenue is anyone’s guess. Worst still, many decisions are based on ‘intuition’ or who shouts the loudest.

So what can you do?

To build a website that will transform your online presence and have a significant impact on your revenue, you have to indulge in a revolutionary concept: listening to your customers through research, data and testing. This is the time of the data-driven website redesign.

Whether you’re in the process of, or are planning a website redesign in the future, this article shows you how to avoid a website redesign disaster and instead deliver a revenue driving website.

1. Remove subjectivity and put your customers at the heart of your website redesign

While your CEO might have a great vision for the website and Dave from the marketing team discounted the second creative option because he doesn’t like blue, you have to stop letting subjective opinions, or designing by committee, rule the decision making process. Unless you’re doing research with your actual customers you just don’t know what will work for them.

Conducting research with your customers will:

  • Highlight the challenges your customers have on your current website
  • Challenge your assumptions. For example, if you have an ecommerce site, what if adding a secure checkout icon actually raises concerns amongst customers as opposed to reassuring them?
  • Provide you with insights into how your customers shop with you and which persuasive elements work
  • Pinpoint areas or ideas you may have never considered without the research

2. Let data be your guide

To strengthen your ideas for the redesign you need to look into your data. From your onsite analytics to call centre data, a thorough investigation will highlight the priority areas to focus your website redesign on. Combining this quantitative data with your qualitative customer research gives you a clearer picture of what you need to tackle in your redesign. It also prevents you from harming positive experiences which are currently working.

With this validated data, you will then be able to create hypotheses which your design concepts will need to tackle. Not only that, but you are safe in the knowledge that you always have the data to fall back on to justify your decisions at each stage of the design.

3. Validate design decision before you build

A/B and multivariate testing your design concepts essentially removes the risk of a traditional redesign. You’ll be testing out ideas borne from customer research and data analysis. You will also be able to validate that they will work in a measured and controlled way with your customers, before you’ve put a single penny into developing anything.

A/B testing your design ideas allows you to;

  • Remove the risk and full development costs around re-designing features and implementing changes that don’t have an impact on KPIs or, worse, negatively impacts them

  • Recognise changing customer opinion or behaviour and account for it in your redesign, rather than going back and fixing the site after the redesign is completed

  • You’ll have the luxury of measuring the impact of each and every change you make and can communicate the impact your website redesign has had on your business’ bottom line.

If the above hasn’t persuaded you to change the way you approach website redesigns, perhaps this will:

Testing your design allows you to capture the revenue uplifts straight away before your development team has a chance to code up the changes, which ultimately can help fund the redesign itself. Conducting a website redesign every few years and not doing much else in-between results in a loss of opportunity, not only in revenue but also in market share and competitive advantage in your marketplace. So don’t get left behind, it’s time to change the way we redesign.

 

By Paul Rouke, founder and director of optimisation at PRWD. 

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