Poorly designed, inefficient, or out-of-date websites cost companies money. Several factors can affect a site or application’s usability, but when a site’s conversion rates start sinking and bounce rates start rising, it may be time for a total redesign.

The project manager of a website redesign has a formidable task, and poor planning could cost the company time and money. Before getting started, any project manager will want to be familiar with the process. So, how to project manage a website redesign? Here are seven steps to help you efficiently guide the project across the finish line.

7 Steps to Plan and Project Managing a Website Redesign

Define your website’s goals: If you want a website to represent a company better, it’s crucial to understand it better. What are the company’s goals? Its values? Where has it had success, and where does it have untapped potential? Speak to the stakeholders in the business. Successful managers develop strategic and clear objectives for their websites before they start investing real time and money in their projects.

Make sure you’ve created marketing personas: You will want to keep your customers in mind. You might have considered a target customer’s attributes, including age, income level, education level, and profession. You might have thought about where your customers like to shop, what other services they use, which types of entertainment they enjoy, and even their religious and political background. Though there is no single way to create these personas, there are several helpful online tools to help you through this process.

Practice Social Listening: Are you setting aside time to notice what others say about your brand on social media? When you do some social listening—monitoring what others are saying about your brand online—you’ll better understand what others think about your product and what your users need. If they’re talking, you should be listening.

Create a content audit: You will have to take a critical look at your site’s content and weed out anything that is out-of-date, incorrect, or irrelevant. Skilled website developers will streamline your site and eliminate content that wastes time and money. This audit is the crucial step to get you there.

Create a site map. Every good website needs a well-designed site map so that Google’s web crawlers will be able to index and rank your company’s content effectively. You will need a developer with strong SEO knowledge during this redesign to create a site map. A quality site map lists all your files and webpages to make it fast and straightforward for users to find them.

Create a wireframe. At this point, it’s time for the web developers to work on mapping out what the website will look and feel like with the wireframe. They will determine optimum user flows based on the research gathered during the planning stage and guide your persona to complete a task with as little interference as possible.

Don’t go live until you are ready. Finally, you have created a secure site that looks fresh, optimizes your workflow, and is ready to generate leads. When you are confident that the developers have eliminated all the bugs, it is finally time to go live!

Contact Us Today

CC&A has been helping clients redesign websites for years, and we have a vast range of services aimed at helping your business meet its goals. We know how to efficiently project manage a website and we look forward to partnering with you for all your website service needs. Contact us for the help you need, including content audits, wireframing your existing site, or undertaking an entire website redesign.