In Monday’s blog I asked “Should You Redesign Your Website?” and pointed out that many people redesign their websites for the wrong reasons. Many businesses worry more about how the website looks rather than how the website functions. In fact in the past, many websites were just an online brochure, a place to put your phone number and business hours. Brochures needed to catch someone’s attention because they needed to compete against all the other brochures on the table but a pretty brochure doesn’t show up on internet search engines. Redesigning your website with flashy graphics, the latest colors and arresting font designs will not increase traffic to your website. I am not saying that people will not find your site pleasing or interesting with the new graphics and colors, I am saying that people will not find your new website through search engines if your concept of website redesign is only about the “look.” You need to redesign your website thinking about its functions; about how it performs using Inbound Marketing.

Small and sole proprietor businesses that do not have large marketing budgets realize that they need to be smarter about attracting new customers to their websites. In order for websites to be successful they must be functional and achieve their goal of attracting traffic and converting customers. Many businesses waste time and money redesigning their websites with the wrong goals in mind. When you redesign your website with inbound marketing goals in mind you approach the task in a completely different way. Inbound marketing is any marketing tactic that relies on earning people’s interest instead of buying it. This means that your website’s redesign should be concerned about getting found and converting your site visitors into leads and customers.

A website redesign using the concepts of inbound marketing should:

• Insure that your Website’s Assets are In Order and Safe: This means protecting keyword authority that you have earned, your inbound links and your premium content.
• Formatting your Homepage: Make a great first impression by focusing on the functionality of your homepage. Can people find the content they want? Can they get in touch with you? Will they do what you want them to do on your homepage?
• Focus on Continuous Original Content that Attracts and Converts: Creative and original content is the most powerful way of attracting and retaining website visitors. This means a blog that is easy to use and update as well as premium content.
• Formatting Your Landing Pages: Design compelling landing pages so visitors will be more willing to give away their contact information for your content offerings. Your redesign should take into account the need to quickly add and update offers and content.
• Conduct Conversion Experiments: Make constant adjustments to landing pages by experimenting with their layout and formatting. Your website should make it easy to do A-B testing of pages and calls-to-action and to make updates and changes when needed.
• Review Your Metrics on Visitors and Leads: Set up a system to measure the metrics of your website so you can reproduce successful campaigns, and scrap failing ones.

It is possible to be smarter and spend less while building a website that attracts traffic and converts new customers. This can be achieved by abandoning old concepts of marketing and adopting new techniques designed to work with the way people now work, live and shop on the internet. For more information about redesigning your website download our free e-book: Website Redesign for Small Businesses and Sole Proprietors: 7 easy steps to make your website more effective.

Photo Credit: IMLS Digital Collections & Content