How to Develop a Website Redesign Strategy That Guarantees Results [+ Free Template] So ... you want to redesign your website . A redesign can be a huge success -- or a total flop . It can also be a long and tedious undertaking, which is why every redesign needs to start with a clear vision and/or problem to solve. That's why we set out to create a helpful guide and worksheet that any inbound marketer can use to plan a successful website redesign. We've identified seven steps of website redesign: strategy, plan, design, build, optimize, launch, and analyze. Step 1: Benchmark Your Current Metrics Before you begin planning your redesign, document your current performance metrics. Number of visits/visitors/unique visitors (monthly average)Bounce rate (monthly average)Time on site (monthly average)Top-performing keywords (in terms of rank, traffic, and lead generation)Number of inbound linking domainsTotal number of new leads/form submissions (per month)Total amount of sales generated (per month)Total number of pages indexedTotal number of pages that receive traffic
What You Can (and Should) Ask for on Your Landing Page Forms Your lead generation forms can make or break your online conversion goals. Because of this, very few other page elements receive quite as much attention as the lead-capture form. In fact, 56% of marketers consider optimizing form logic to have a very significant impact on website performance, and another 46% consider optimizing their form layout to have a very significant impact as well, according to MarketingSherpa. So why is the form so vital? Well, it’s basically the entire point of a landing page -- and the entire crux of lead generation! The importance of lead-capture forms means you can sift through quite a lot of research on exactly what information to ask for on your lead generation forms. What I've learned is, there's no hard and fast rule that governs what fields are mandatory for all landing page forms. Seem like a tall order? Follow these steps to help you determine what information you can (and should be) asking for on your forms. Step 1: Understand Page Friction Think fast!
How to Design a Site Structure Visitors AND Search Engines Love If you have a website, then you have certain steps that you want your visitors to take; fill out a form, make a purchase, learn about a product or service, sign up for a newsletter, that sort of thing. Whether people actually reach those goals, however, is entirely dependent on how easy you make it for them -- as in, how easy it is for visitors to navigate through your website. The best sites are created with a keen understanding of visitors’ interests, needs, and expectations. Text, visual design, organization, and navigation should all work together to allow visitors to find key information and reach a goal -- the one you hope they reach as a marketer -- quickly and easily. To get to this point with your site, you need a clear site structure that is easy to navigate, follows a hierarchy of content, and feels natural and intuitive to visitors. This post is going to give you some guidance around how you can make that happen for your own website. Organizing Your Site’s Content Areas
The Non-Designer's Essential Glossary of Web Design Terms When I started my first job, I did everything my tiny marketing team needed at a moment's notice. Although I was more experienced in blogging and social media management, I was soon pulled into design projects. One day I was mocking up an infographic; the next, I was designing an ebook, and then the day after, I was creating and ordering custom die-cut stickers ... and I was woefully unprepared. I had no idea what the difference was between HTML and CSS, JPEGs and PNGs, or fonts and typefaces. When I was speaking with our in-house designer or an outside contractor, I felt so silly. To help myself function in this brand new environment that needed me to be up to speed -- fast -- I had to fake it until I made it. I knew I couldn't be the only marketer who needed to become fluent in designer-speak. Alignment The positioning of the elements in your design (e.g. text, images, etc.). Analogous Colors On the color wheel, analogous colors are those that lie on either side of any given color. Crop
The 7 Elements of Modern Web Design Every year, we see new elements and styles in website design begin to emerge. Some elements -- when incorporated thoughtfully -- help tell stories and explain your company. Other elements work to improve how content looks on a specific device. While it's not necessary to include every trend that comes about on your website, many of them have the potential to improve your visitor's experience. But with so many options to choose from, it can be challenging to determine which ones are really worth considering. To help you narrow your focus, we've detailed eight important elements of modern website design that you can include to improve your site's performance. For more tips on creating a modern web design, download our free website redesign template here. Element #1: Unique and Large Typography Most companies have a particular font or typography that they use to help their customers immediately identify them versus their competitors. Why is it useful? Element #2: Large & Responsive Hero Images
Web Design 101: How HTML, CSS, and JavaScript Work Ever wondered how computer programming works, but haven't done anything more complicated on the web than upload a photo to Facebook? Then you're in the right place. To someone who's never coded before, the concept of creating a website from scratch -- layout, design, and all -- can seem really intimidating. But you can! The goal of this post is to, in plain English, teach you with the basics of HTML, CSS, and one of the most common programming languages, JavaScript. A Brief Intro to Programming Languages Programming, or coding, is like solving a puzzle. Every page on the web that you visit is built using a sequence of separate instructions, one after another. HTML and CSS are actually not technically programming languages; they're just page structure and style information. In the very early 1990s, HTML was the only language available on the web. The TL:DR Version An overview: HTML is at the core of every web page, regardless the complexity of a site or number of technologies involved.
Thank You - Bluewire Media Instantly download your Website Checklist for Graphic Designers below: Adam Franklin & Toby Jenkins Thanks for downloading the Website Checklist for Graphic Designers. We hope you find it valuable! Click to tweet this template >> It’s also been sent to the email address you supplied, so you’ve got a copy you can come back to. Thanks, Adam Franklin & Toby Jenkins PS.
A Beginner’s Guide to Understanding UX Design If you are thinking of working on your conversion optimization and landing page optimization, understanding UX design is essential. As you know, we write a lot about the user, the single visitor that arrives on your site or landing page and needs to be triggered and helped around. UX design helps make sure that during this process the most important person isn’t left out of the mix: The user. What is UX Design? UX Design can be defined in several different ways, but in the simplest form it understanding what people do and then designing a way to make it better. User Experience Design enhances customer satisfaction and loyalty by improving usability, ease of use, and pleasure provided by the interaction between the customer and the product. What Does A User Experience Designer Actually Do? Like many roles in an organization there is no typical day for a UX designer, however there is a set of tools and techniques that a UX designer can rely on during various stages of a project. 1. 2. 3. 4.
The ultimate guide to information architecture Information architecture is equal parts art and science. Whether you hire a dedicated IA professional, or just sort of let IA happen on your projects, if you’re designing things with content, you’re using IA. But while you can just kind of “let the content happen,” in whatever way seems to make sense for your project at the time, a well-thought-out, well organized structure for your content can make your site infinitely more usable for your end users. While not every project can have a dedicated IA, understanding the basic principles behind good information architecture can go a long way toward making sure your site’s content is as easy to access and use as possible. What is information architecture? Information architecture encompasses a few related concepts. The ability to create an information structure that makes it easy for users to find what they are looking for is key for any information architect Further, it’s the art and science of organizing and labeling those digital properties.
How the human eye reads a website | UX | Creative Bloq In this article, Chris Bank of UXPin — the wireframing & prototyping app — explains the theory and practice of creating visual hierarchies in web UI design. For analysis of UI examples from over 33 companies, check out the free ebook Web UI Best Practices. More than being creative, a good artist must also consider subtleties like composition, colors, size, what to include, and — perhaps more importantly — what to leave out. That's no easy feat, which is why we hold the masters like da Vinci and Van Gogh in such high regard. Web UI designers must do the same. In this article we'll first look at what visual hierarchy is and how it's achieved, then we'll look at how that works in relation to the natural movement of the human eye. Event promotion Visual organization In his paper Communicating with Visual Hierarchy, Luke Wroblewski, author and senior principal of product design at Yahoo, explains that the visual presentation of a web interface is essential for: What is this? 01. 02.