What’s the process behind a website refresh?
Designing and building an entirely new website can seem daunting. Whether you have a site which needs work, or your current website needs a complete makeover, we understand how overwhelming it can feel.
Reasons why you need a new site;
1. Slow or broken: websites with images that are too large or broken code take longer to load. Perhaps your website needs to be optimized so that it loads faster. This will reduce the bounce rate and increase session time per visit.
2. Ugly: the majority of successful websites nowadays have a clean user-interface. You need a presentable website or viewers will navigate away before even reading your content.
3. Not mobile friendly: around half of users use mobile devices to access the internet. Therefore, your website should be optimized on desktops and mobile devices alike.
4. Old content: outdated content may no longer be applicable. Therefore, you need to make updates or upload new content to provide the best value for your audience.
5. No longer converts - poor user experience: dated landing pages may lead to what’s called ad blindness. To avoid viewers ignoring your advertising or offers, change the website to improve the conversion rate.
To help make things easier and clearer for you, we’ve outlined our 5 step process to help you understand what happens when someone visits us for a website refresh.
This is setup in seven stages:
1. Discovery
2. UX & Site structure
3. Design
4. Messaging & Content
5. Build
6. Final Adjustments & Training
7. Launch
1.Discovery Call
Considered the most important step; the discovery call helps us to lay it all out on the table and understand what it is about your website that needs to go. We’ll review everything from the current layout, usability, design, content and also strategies to capture your audience’s attention. Our tech team will also look into the SEO Health and discuss which content management system is best for you.
2.UX , Site Structure & Basic Wireframes
Sometimes your current site structure and user experience aren’t working. Often we find that after looking at your website analytics the most popular pages are the most unexpected. We’ll reimagine your homepage structure and also discuss strategies for your leads to become long term customers.
Wireframes are used to lay out the structure and design of the website. They take into account user needs and the journey they will take through your website. The aim is to offer a visual overview of website design, which allows you and our team to get on the same page.
A site structure map is also imperative to understand how many pages are within your site and where each piece of information sits. We’ve included an example site structure below:
3. Design
The good news is you don’t need to have it all figured out. We will have worked with you to determine your current brand communications in the discovery call. This helps understand what colours, fonts and images we should use.
You should also have a fairly good idea of the layout and general structure. Now you have a wireframe, so this is where the design truly begins. To help get the best understanding of what you’re looking for, we source design inspiration from websites like:
· envato
· behance
Typically our web design team will then design the homepage from scratch for the first submission, and make sure you’re loving the look and feel before the rollout of other page designs.
4. Messaging & Content
At Creative Resort, we connect what you say with how you look. It’s really important your website not only has the right structure, user experience and design - but the words are compelling and make sense.
Our team of copywriters will help bring this to life, and take the good parts from your current website, then work on the bad. Website copy should be clear and quickly direct your audience to where they want to go.
5. Build
You can leave this part to the experts. Once you’re happy with the website design and we’ve gotten go-ahead for your website copy – then we hand these files over to the web development team. They can start building your website in a Content Management System like WordPress.
6. Final Adjustments & Training
Our web designers are 90% finished and we will now start to show you the staging website! Here we can make any final tweaks and adjustments before we launch. Our team will also provide a training session or video recording on how you can easily update your website in the future.
7. Launch
Congratulations, we’re ready to launch! Our web team will monitor your website during launch to ensure nothing goes wrong. Any teething problems that arise will be dealt with immediately. We are there to support you during the launch phase so that your website has the best chance of succeeding.
We also take care of transitioning your website from the staging to the live environment. We will configure your domain and work with the hosting service to set up your website for optimal performance.