There are many reasons why your organization might be considering a redesign. If you’ve started hearing comments from your colleagues or users, consider qualitative feedback, as well as strategic and quantitative considerations, for making a change in your digital presence.

You may suspect that your site is starting to look and feel a bit dated or challenging to manage, and wonder if, beyond the short-term and regular updates you are making, that it is time for a full or major redesign.

You also may have a new strategic plan in the works, or that is recently approved, and need a website to reflect your new identity, images, or organizational goals. For example, a logo update often kicks off a website and brand redesign project in and of itself.

Some signs that point to a website redesign

Key indicators that a larger redesign may be in the near future for your website:

• Internal management challenges: Your staff is having a hard time keeping your current site updated and wants to implement a more streamlined content management system.
• Accessibility and responsiveness concerns: Or, maybe your website is inaccessible on smaller screens or mobile devices
• Mismatch with current and modern trends: Perhaps there are current design or technical trends you’ve seen on other sites, and it just doesn’t seem like your site is measuring up to modern standards.

These are all good reasons and worthy enough to consider some type of larger redesign.

Where to start: user feedback and data analytics

Both user feedback and data analytics act as an important stepping-off point that will inform your decisions and approach going forward.

1. User feedback

User feedback will help define your priorities, so you can start to keep track of feedback for use later on in the build process. User feedback may include:

• Internal users: Challenges and concerns that the website is not doing what it is intended to do.
  • “I spend too much of my day on website updates that I could be spending on something else.”
  • “Our website doesn’t look like who we want to be anymore.”

• External users: Receiving increased feedback by email or social media that users are not getting what they need from your site.
  • “Where can I donate on the site? There isn’t a section.”
  • “Do you offer these services? I didn’t find any.”

Start documenting and categorizing this feedback to keep it top of mind and be able to reference throughout the process.

2. Data analytics

Data analytics are also going to paint a detailed picture of where your existing website may be in need of a redesign. These numbers can support qualitative and strategic reasons to consider a redesign. Each organization has its own unique goals, and you want your digital ecosystem to get you closer to meeting those quantifiable goals. Metrics that show this may include:

• Total website traffic is declining month-over-month
• The percentage of traffic driven to the website from search engines has declined drastically over the past 6 – 12 months
• The average bounce rate across your website is 85% or higher (this shows that visitors are likely not finding what they need quickly).
• You are nowhere near hitting your Key Performance Indicators (KPI) targets.

Again there are many reasons that you may want to redesign, but if a combination of the above ring true, it may at least warrant some further digging and research. To explore issues such as the steps to follow when approaching a redesign — including timing and budgeting — watch our recent webinar, “Tackling a Major Website Redesign.” Alongside our partners at the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE), we explore the big bucket items to consider when embarking on a redesign.