Your website is the focal point of your marketing and communications efforts. So, if your site isn’t working hard enough to achieve your goals, then you should undoubtedly consider a website redesign. Before taking action, it is vital that you put together a list of measurable redesign goals, as this will help guide your decisions in regards to strategy, design and technology. Below are eight common website redesign goals that are easily measurable with common web analytics platforms (e.g., Google Analytics), as well as other marketing automation software.

1. Increase unique visitor traffic: Nearly every business wants to increase the number of new eyeballs on its site. Whether it’s through a comprehensive inbound marketing plan (e.g., content marketing, search engine optimization, social media, targeted email marketing) or through paid advertising, your business should employ some kind of online marketing tactic to grow your audience and make the most of your website.

2. Attract repeat visitors: Give visitors a reason to return to your site by providing valuable content and/or supporting your customers’ needs. This requires the development of a strategic content plan that addresses the types of content you will produce, how often it will be published, and how you will continuously attract visitors.

3. Increase search engine traffic: Your audience uses search engines to research everything. Achieving high rankings on search engines is part art, part science, and requires the extensive knowledge of an experienced search engine marketing agency that can serve as a strategic partner to maximize the effectiveness of your web design and development efforts. Increasing search engine traffic is not a simple task. Targeted keyword research, continual content development and numerous other tactics are necessary to develop a truly effective search engine marketing strategy that will drive your search engine referrals up.

4. Build up referral traffic: Search engine rankings are influenced by your credibility, which is largely dependent upon referral traffic. Your new website should have great, shareable content so that you can attract additional visitors to your site. Social media is a great way to build up referral traffic, as well as industry sites/blogs that your audience is already going to.

5. Reduce bounce rate: Bounces occur when visitors leave your site without interacting. Lower bounce rates can indicate that your pages are working well and meeting visitor expectations. If key pages on your site are producing high bounce rates, some ways to decrease the bounce rate include developing an intuitive site architecture, high quality content, clear calls to action and an appropriate marketing strategy.

6. Increase pages per visit: Overall, more pageviews per visit is a good thing. You want visitors to explore more pages on your site, not because the site is hard to navigate, but because they are highly engaged. A site with an intuitive navigation structure, a good internal linking strategy, effective calls to action and a speedy load time is sure to elevate visitor engagement. Each page view is a new opportunity to impress your visitor, so be sure to factor that into your redesign planning.

7. Improve visitor-to-lead conversion: Your site should function as a powerful lead generation tool. When redesigning a website, it is essential to look at each page and assess whether the purpose of the page and the action(s) you want visitors to take is clearly and immediately conveyed. Additionally, make sure that you are tracking your leads closely and review conversion rates so you can understand what strategies are delivering the best for your business.

8. Increase ROI: Websites are no longer just eye candy. With proper planning and tracking in place, a website can significantly contribute to ROI goals. The key is measuring results properly. Every lead should be attributed to a specific source and every closed lead should be tracked back to its origin. Marketing automation software makes this easy, but for some businesses, it is possible to manually track this information.

Contemplating a website redesign effort and not sure where to start? Contact ZAG Interactive for a complementary consultation.

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