Redesigning Your Website? – 7 Things You Need to Consider During Your Online Rebrand

A website is your main point of contact, all our focus elements as an online digital marketing agency, lead back to websites. Your google my business profile will link to your website, your social media services will link to your website, a map search will link to your website and any ads you create will link there too.

So your audience needs to be captivated and ensnared within seconds of clicking on that link!

Therefore if you’re redesigning your website you need to follow our ultimate website design tips to make sure that you stay a top competitor in your industry online. 

Step 1: Catchy but Searchable

Assuming you’ve organised your web hosting services in Melbourne or in AustraliaYour domain name needs to reflect your business name, which means your business name has to be catchy. You should remember to make sure that your name reflects your practice and what you do but also that it’s not too long. It needs to be short, simple, memorable and searchable. To have a searchable business name you need to think ahead to what your audience will be searching to find you. For example if you were a dentist in Melbourne a name like ‘Pearly Whites’ is cute and catchy however ‘Dentists of Melbourne’ would come up in a search for ‘Melbourne Dentists’, ‘Dentists in Melbourne’ and more. This is a great tip from our SEO marketing consultants because it will help with your organic search engine optimization (organic SEO) later down the track. 

Step 2: Colours and Themes

Your website needs to have a colour profile to coincide with your brand logo, you will need 2-4 set colours that you’ll use on all your branding, including your website. As a brand strategy agency, we always recommend including a staple colour like white or black so that you can use simple backgrounds and still have it reflect your brand identity. We recommend to pair these staple colours with imagery that reflects the same colours, for example if your branding is pink and white you can have a white website with pink banners and pictures of patients in white smiling with pink lipstick, or you could have someone in pink in a white room the list goes on. Pairing is essential to create optimum aesthetics. 

Step 3: Pages

Once you’ve decided how to style your website you’ll need to pick the pages, using a program like WordPress can help with this. You will need a homepage with links to an About Page, a Services/Products Page, a Contact Page, a Bookings Page, and maybe even a Blog Page or something else relevant to your brand. You will need to make sure that all pages are clickable from your header and footer of all pages and we also recommend making a selection of different pages visible lower down on your home page. Whilst it may sound complicated now, all you really need to remember is that you need a three click system, you should be able to get anywhere in your website and complete a task in three clicks.

Starting at your Homepage *one click* Contact page *one click* Contact us form *one click *submit. DONE. 

A tip from our ecommerce web designers is to make sure while you’re building these pages to also optimise each page for different device settings, make sure your website pages are usable and visible from all sorts of mobiles iphones, samsungs, or even ipads and tablets. Every device will make your website look different but the focus point is to make sure it still looks good and it’s still usable. 

Step 4: Content Content Content

Next is what your website contains, which is loads and loads of content. You will want little blurbs about you and your brand everywhere, on every page you’ll want to refer back to your work or your team in a positive, friendly and welcoming way. Another thing to keep in mind is to always mention key search terms relevant to your business, for example the dentist would want to mention ‘local dentists’ and ‘melbourne dentists’ over and over so that Google will help deliver you organically to the top of search results. Our final tip on content writing is proofread, make sure that if you’re writing with a humorous tone that you can tell and make sure your spelling and grammar is correct, but most of all ensure that it makes sense!

Step 5: Link your socials

Whilst some of your audience will be finding your website from your social media, you want to make sure that everyone else can still find your social media services! We love to see links in the footer section of your website but if you’re especially proud of your social media put a feature block at the bottom of your home page where it can show all your recent posts on your website too, tempting every website visitor to be only one click away from following and liking your brand. 

Step 6: Optimisation

You could equate this step to a sitewide data spell-check. Optimisation of a website means checking that page names, internal and external links and embedded image names. 

First off is page names, in the case that you may have followed a template so far, it is good to go back and check that every single page you have created is named correctly, describes what it is and is relevant to your business, whilst I have mentioned a bookings page previously, if you are solely selling products, this page would not be necessary, or even if you are running a booking service, if you cannot book online yet, you cannot include this page.

Another example of optimisation comes in the form of internal links, to make sure all your page links are fully formed, correct and unbroken you need to check every page link but also the internal links, try to avoid links that are too descriptive or have a chance of being misspelt when written down, but also ensure that if you have linked the booking page to a booking button on the home page, triple check that the link still takes you to the correct final destination, and do this with all internal connections too. 

Finally, naming all your embedded images with image names, descriptions and every field available filled helps infinitely with search results and is a step often overlooked! 

Step 7: Launch

Last but not least, make sure your website is public! We always trial our new websites pretending to be customers to make sure that there are no errors in any form submission or booking attempts or any other website action. Once you have been through error-testing and you’re good to go, spread the word on your socials, spread the word through your colleagues and make sure to spread the word with referral marketing through your already existing clients and customers too.

Hopefully this helps guide you as you go along your redesigning journey, if you need any help we have a team of experts at the ready to help you get your brand built and your website performing. Book in for a consultation today to forgo the hassle and let us provide full service digital marketing just for you!