How do you know when it’s time for a website redevelopment? The hard and fast rule is that you should redevelop your website every few years. Website technology is constantly evolving. User expectations respond to performance improvements and new functionality almost immediately. What this means is that websites that are older than 2 years old will underserve users.
Websites with a Performance Budget Last Longer
“Set it and forget it” does not exist when it comes to websites. Your website must respond to the changing needs of your users. Websites that do not will have declining conversion rates. Performance budgets allow websites to grow and respond to change. Website administrators that have a healthy performance budget tend to get more time out of their website. Website administrators that do not, should budget to replace their website every 2 years.
About Citrus-O
Citrus-O is one of our oldest clients. They reached out when their former developer stopped responding to their emails. Over the years we have developed two websites for their team. Throughout our relationship, we have also managed their digital marketing programs. We have written two case studies on how our services have helped their business grow:
Throughout our relationship, we have performed several website design refreshes and two website redesigns/redevelopments. So what’s the difference? A website redevelopment completely replaces the website. This is done to improve performance in the code, framework and software level or when the design changes dramatically. A website design refresh makes small changes to individual page templates. These small design tweaks are usually monitored with A&B (split) testing and are completed to make marginal conversion improvements.
When is it Time to Redevelop Your Website?
Having a development team at your disposal can go a long way. As part of our ongoing services, we keep an eye on key metrics for Citrus-O. There were a few indicators that it was time to make a change. Here are a few things we noticed.
Conversion Growth Began to Stabilise
Citrus-O has grown consistently since our last redevelopment. Our high-water mark over this period was around 400% growth. After this, we noticed conversions began to stabilize. We dove deeper into the metrics to discover where we could improve.
User Groups
The gender, age and values of users had shifted. Two groups immerged from user data and research. These groups were confirmed with the CRM team at Citrus-O.
User Device Preferences
The first thing we noticed is that a large proportion of users were now accessing the website via mobile. When the website was initially designed, it valued desktop and mobile users equally. While the desktop experience met the expectations of users, the mobile experience needed reconsideration. We shifted our digital marketing campaigns to reach more mobile users, however, website performance was less than desirable for this device. This resulted in diminished conversion rates for mobile users relative to desktop users.
User Habits
User habits changed as well. We noticed a larger number of website visitors converting via the click-to-call goal after the call center hours had closed. This provided us with the opportunity to produce a better after-hours user experience.
Key Performance Targets
While desktop performance was adequate, we would have a hard time achieving the performance metrics we wanted to see on mobile. Redeveloping the website future-proofed our performance metrics for the foreseeable future.
Why We Redeveloped the Website
The stabilization of conversion metrics indicated a potential issue with our existing digital strategy. We made some changes on the inbound marketing side, which resulted in increased traffic. Unfortunately, it did not result in increased conversions. After double-checking our audiences, we reviewed heat maps and user recordings to locate the drop-off. We communicated with the call center to chat about potential issues users had with the website. We ran performance tests. We reviewed competitors’ websites. Everything supported our findings that the current website underserved mobile users and didn’t resonate as well with the new user groups. Our conversion records indicated we could also provide a better user experience for after-hours users.
Key Features of the Website Redevelopment
When it comes to website design and development, we focus on how we can effectively guide your unique users to conversion to achieve your business goals.
Modern, Mobile-Friendly Frameworks
Nothing lasts forever and even the best frameworks are eventually replaced with something better. We reviewed what the new kids on the block had created and decided on a framework that was cost-effective to develop with and gave our client room to grow.
User Journies Revisited
Having established who our users are from data research, we determined several features would help our user groups locate the correct service and specialties. We created a megamenu to aid these specific users on their journey. For example, users like Jennifer are service orientated and search for keywords like “Carpet Cleaning“, while users like John are results-oriented and search for specialties like “Pet Odour Removal“. Value shoppers default to discounts and offers. For this reason, the promotion call to action is also repeated in the mega menu.
After-Hours Booking Form
The team at Citrus-O loves to get to know their customers and determine how they can be better served. For this reason, the preferred conversion point has always been click-to-call. We noticed an increase in users calling after-hours and learned that these users were directed to an answering service. Their calls were returned promptly the next morning. We decided that it might be a good idea to split-test an after-hours form to see if we can provide a better user experience for these users.
The after-hours booking form is displayed as the main call to action across the website when the call center is closed. This includes holidays, which are set through advanced custom fields in the back end.
The form asks all the initial call questions required at the call center and allows for a brief follow-up call to confirm the booking and make any upsells.
Citrus-O’s client relationship management software and booking system have been custom developed by their IT team. We decided against a direct integration into this system for phase 1 and created a cron job to run each morning. The cron job creates and emails a single CSV to a call center agent that imports and verifies the new leads each morning.
Cleaner Service Pages
The old website had sidebars and didn’t use page space effectively for modern standards. The new service pages feature a clean, long scroll design that is instantly familiar to modern users. As we scroll down the service page the sticky menu is joined by a service menu navigation that assists desktop users in locating content. This feature is eliminated for the mobile view to keep the design clean and the user focused on the content. Both devices experience the same Call Us & Book Now calls to action which toggles on and off depending on the time of day.
Improved Blog Structure
The old Citrus-O website took a cost-conscientious approach to the blog. The old website had a very basic overview page and few articles. This served only to bring users to the website and provided little value to conversions. It did improve organic rankings and help to introduce users to the Citrus-O brand, but its main focus was not on driving conversions.
We noticed over the years that users would navigate to additional blog posts and were trying to spend more time on the website. For the website redevelopment, we made it a priority to better serve these users with several overview pages, categories, tags and related products and articles. Content entry has been created with a visual editor, making content entry easier for administrative users. The new format empowers the Citrus-O team to expand their content strategy and take the blog to new heights, attracting more users!
Audit, Removal & Redirection of Unnecessary Pages
Content creators gonna create content. As websites age, we see patterns develop in usage. Sometimes content doesn’t resonate with users. Other times redundant content is accidentally created. A page audit allows us to see what’s working and what’s important to users. Pages that are unnecessary or not important to users are purged and redirected to relevant content.
Improved Performance
Landing page speed and the quickness of your website matter! It has been proven time and time again that users will not wait for a slow website to load. Users are impatient. They will find another option to suit their needs. This is how a slow website helps your competition succeed. A key focus of this redesign project was reducing landing page time and delivering content quickly to eager users.
Considering Website Redevelopment? Trust Our Award Winning Team.
Is it time to redevelop your website? We are a senior web development team, specializing in conversion rate optimization. We can help you improve your results and achieve your goals. Let’s Chat about your website redevelopment project today!