If you’re considering updating or redesigning your website, there are five key steps that you should consider undertaking.
1. Heuristic Analysis: Evaluation of the user interface and assessment of overall site usability. The focus of this exercise is to outline what aspects of the site can be improved to enhance overall usability and business value. You’ll want to examine the interface and judge its compliance with recognized usability principles (the “heuristics”). Areas of attention may include:
- Navigation
- Page Layout
- Visual Design
- Mobile Experience
- Calls to Action/Interactivity
- Forms
2. Content Audit: Next, you’ll want to look at your site’s content in order to identify content gaps and areas of emphasis from a content-perspective that can inform site enhancements. Questions should include:
- Does this support goals and/or have strategic value?
- Is it factually accurate?
- Do we like it?
- Is it redundant or trivial?
- Shareable?
3. Competitive Review: See how your site stacks up to the competition by comparing the site’s content and User Experience to up to four or five competitors identified by various stakeholders in your organization. You can look at many of the same elements outlined above.
4. SEO Audit: Does your website conforms to best practices for high search engine visibility? Work independently or hire an agency or consultant to
- Ensure all on-page elements (meta data, etc.) that can affect SEO are in place
- Identify any crawl errors
- Identify opportunities to promote optimal site crawl
You can verify your review against Flightpath’s SEO checklist which can be found here: https://www.flightpath.com/resources/seo-audit-checklist/
5. Analytics Validation: Most site use Google Analytics or a similar platform to track website activity. Work independently or hire an agency or consultant to identify what should be tracked at the website and validate whether or not it’s being done effectively.
Depending upon where you net out on these five important site aspects, it may or may not be time to initiate a website overhaul. Good luck!!