Updated: September 6, 2017
Every so often, it’s a good idea to give your organization’s website a fresh new design. Doing so makes your company look active and dedicated to giving your customers the most advanced products and services.
But considering the fact many websites contain hundreds, maybe even thousands of pages, it can be a daunting task regardless of how careful you are. Proper planning helps ensure it all goes smoothly…no or very little planning can turn it all into a big nightmare.
Pages can get mixed up, deleted or otherwise not be available on the new site, which can end up costing your company thousands of dollars.
To avoid this calamity, you need to consider the following factors before, during and after. Continue reading to learn about all of these considerations you need to keep in mind when redesigning your website.
Before doing anything though, you need to get some baseline information and backup your old site just in case something goes awry. Load time, conversion rates, search rankings, bounce rates for your top landing pages and a list of important inbound links is information you need to have in-hand before you even get started.
Once you have all of this, it’s time to start your site re-design. Taking the following 34 steps during this process will ensure it all goes smoothly and you begin reaping the benefit of a new website as quickly as possible.
Prior to New Site Launch
1. Have the old site available to put back online immediately if something goes wrong.
2. Retain your existing URL structure if possible so you can minimize impact on search rankings.
3. Address methods to eliminate duplicate content to prevent it from occurring in the first place.
4. If you’re unable to keep existing URL structures, have a plan on how you will handle switching to the new file structure, including 301 re-directs, updating links, marketing materials and PPC ads.
5. Keep a copy of the old site on-hand just in case.
6. Use a link checker utility like Xenu to scan your new site and find any broken links.
7. Take a moment to review titles and meta descriptions on your new site.
8. Before launching, check your new site manually using multiple web browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Chrome). Many differences exist between these browsers.
9. Update XML and HTML sitemaps so search engines can easily crawl your new site.
10. Verify all web forms and other interactive features are working properly.
11. Protect your site from competitors and search engines during development. The best way to accomplish this is to develop the site locally and internally to your firm.
12. Review existing RSS feeds
13. Verify your new site will work properly with traffic tracking codes like Google AdWords and Google Analytics.
14. Develop a plan to add current analytics tracking to your new site before launch.
During new site launch
15. Did you back up your old site? If not, now is your last chance.
16. Update your .htaccess and robots.txt files so any 301 redirects will work properly.
17. Be sure AdWords and PPC campaign pages are updated and working properly.
18. Update payment gateways or other important sites if your server’s IP address changes.
19. Test all email address and make sure they’re working properly.
20. Remove any temporary no-index tags, robots.txt and be sure any other robot control tags are updated in case you had something blocked off during the development process.
After new site launch – catching any mistakes
21. Run your spider/link finder once again to catch any broken links you may have missed.
22. Test your new site’s load time. Google has claimed load time is now a big ranking factor.
23. Make double-sure you put tracking codes/scripts on your new pages
24. Check server logs for any 404 or other server errors.
25. Look at your Google Webmaster Tools and Bing Webmaster accounts to see if the search bots are spotting any errors.
26. Update any broken inbound links at the source of the link or through a 301 re-direct.
27. Verify PPC ads are still correct.
28. Make sure your XML sitemap is up-to-date.
29. Compare bounce rates for the new site vs. the old one.
30. Monitor how newly indexed (…or re-indexed) pages are ranking.
31. Now that your site is live online, test it once again with all web browsers and even a mobile smartphone if you’re able to.
32. Manually test all web forms and other interactive scripts.
33. Check where your site is in the search results after the search engines have indexed it once again.
34. Go to Google and Bing and type “site:yourdomain.com” in the search bar to see if the number of pages indexed has improved over your previous numbers.
Taking these all important steps helps ensure your site transition goes as smoothly as possible. Also, they help you spot any errors and allow you to make those corrections before any negative consequences arise.
Double, perhaps even triple check your site to make sure everything is working properly. If not, you’re certain to suffer devastating setbacks in the search engines as well as eroding good will of your site visitors.
Remember what Thomas Edison once said – “Good fortune is what happens when opportunity meets with planning.”