Laying the Groundwork for a Successful Website Redesign

Let's Get Started - Engaging Your Team With Forward-Looking Strategy  

When undertaking a website redesign, it’s tempting to focus on a pretty face. A redesign is about making the website look better, isn't it? Well, that's only part of the story...

A redesign is a valuable opportunity to improve form and function, engagement, and conversions. If we only focus on putting a prettier face on our website, we’ve missed the opportunity to be better at serving the needs of our members, customers, and staff.

This is a chance to reimagine  “what currently is” and envision “what could be” by gathering input from internal teams and external stakeholders (members and customers) - through surveys, small focus group calls, and 1:1 conversations.

1. Gather a cross-functional team and talk about how your website can support your organizational mission and goals 
   
   What challenges can the website solve? What unique value can the website contribute?  Ask these questions, and summarize what you discover into key findings. 
   
   
2. Identify success measures to know that you did things right 
   
   Increases in website visits, customer retention, event registrations, sponsorship investments, and social sharing can all be ways to measure success. 
   
   
3. Brainstorm potential strategies to meet your goals 
   
   Don’t bound yourself to just what’s practical right now. It’s too easy to limit innovation with “we can’t do that” or “it’s too expensive” or “we’ve always done it this way.”
   

Prioritize strategies based on impact and what is achievable, creating short- and long-term plans:

1. Quick wins -  What can we do right now to improve the membership experience?
   
   
2. Short-term tactics -  Where will we generate the most positive impact with this website redesign project?
   
   
3. Long-term strategy - Where do we aspire to be 36 months from now?
   

Your new digital strategy provides an aspirational vision of the future that aligns with your mission and goals. By circulating your strategy among your organization’s leaders, you gain buy-in for the future vision while breaking down silos.

Don’t put your strategy up on a shelf! It should be a living, breathing narrative that's revisited at least quarterly and provides priorities and a roadmap to keep your teams (and partners) on track.

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Over the last 25+ years, Results Direct has guided hundreds of associations to launch successful websites - and we've gathered together Website Redesign Best Practice Tips to to save your organization countless hours and dollars with your website redesign.

You can access these time- and money-saving "lessons learned" by downloading the Laying the Groundwork For a Successful Website Redesign guide: