Launching a new site can be very exciting for those who are involved. Sites not only get designed but they also get redesigned, rebranded and migrated for all sorts of reasons and apart from these reasons stakeholders are always interested in the site traffic and revenue. Are you involved in site migration there are some common mistakes which designers and businesses make over and over again. This article is a small guide to show you how to avoid the most common SEO and UX pitfalls while rebranding and redesigning the website.
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The most common reason for the site redesign is that it feels outdated. But, then the new and the old both sites fail to perform. The need for redesign should be backed by some concrete reasons like CMS lacks certain features and A/B split tests suggest that conversion rates can further be improved.
Also, redesigning objects should take into account SEO targets as well such as retaining the old traffic while simultaneously improving the ranking and getting new traffic. Having measurable objectives will help you to define the success metric and will be easy to measure the success.
Every site migration is unique and needs to be handled carefully. For, in order to define the realistic objectives one must be aware of the strengths and weakness of the site along with the understanding of the competitive landscape. Failing to take into account the strengths and weakness of the site one can set the unrealistic expectations and objectives.
Another thing is be realistic about your position in the market. Are really in position to challenge the competitor? If the honest answer is no then site redesign can prove to be a waste of money.
Take the data driven approach and use analytics to help you make the better decisions. It can help you in identifying the things like high and low traffic pages and popular and problematic journeys of your users.
This approach will help you to prioritize the areas which truly needs your special attention and will safeguard the one which are already performing well.
For websites, it is essential to find the right balance between UX and SEO because focusing too much on UX may dip the SEO ranking and focusing too much on SEO may lead to user interface issues.
It is very common that when a site is redesigned by the UX team there is a dip in the traffic and when the site is redesigned by the SEO team there are user interaction issues. In both cases the outcome is negative.
Therefore, finding the right balance is very essential and it is desired that both teams work in harmony to attain the best.
If not though through the content for the new site can lead to a failed migration. Any decision to move, remove or consolidate the content without thinking its effect on UX and SEO is a classic and common mistake.
On the other hand a well though new content strategy can influence the site’s information architecture and can boost the web traffic as well thereby, leaving a great positive impact on the site’s migration. In order to avoid bad surprises it is suggested that one should evaluate the content strategy in great detail before site migration is moved into production.
With the site migration it is important to test it with the real time users even if you have followed all the best practices. Relying completely on best practices can be very risk and you may not like the results. A real-time testing with the real users can provide necessary insights and improvements which may still be necessary and you may have missed.
