This article is based on years of experience designing and redesigning websites for many different companies, organizations and industries, and will give you some guidelines for making your project fairly painless.

What is website redesign and why is it necessary?

Re-designing a website is often thought of as being more of a graphic design process—taking an older website and give it a totally new look so visitors and customers will take notice, or perhaps adding more content to the website so information is readily available to existing or potential customers.

This approach has resulted in many websites which are often more informational, overly complex and confusing for the website visitor. Many websites fail to capture any information about the visitor, and often contribute little to the qualification of potential customers or assisting with the pre-sales process.

Another reason why redesigning websites is necessary is that the Internet has evolved. Bandwidth has increased, new technologies have emerged, website users' expectations have changed. What was considered to be an extravagance a few years ago, is now a necessity.

Because the Internet is evolving so quickly, less sophisticated websites tend to age more quickly than interactive websites, especially as more Internet users come to expect more from a website.

Redesign Considerations

While it is true that your website may be the first contact a prospective client has with your company or organization, and the look and feel is definitely important in making a great first impression, there are many other redesign considerations, such as:

• What new website capabilities are needed?
• Can the navigation be improved?
• Is it difficult or time-consuming to make changes to your website?
• How are website visitors currently using your website?
• What is your website conversion rate?

If you don't have the answers to these questions, please read on and I will explain in detail why it is important to talk about what your website is currently doing—or not doing—to help with your marketing efforts, and how to best approach re-designing your website so it not only looks good, but works for your business.

Evaluate your website

It's great to start with a list of what your website does, and how well it does it.

Your list should include things like provide general information for customers, company background for new customers and a rating of how well you think it performs that task.

Next create a list of of what your web site does not do, either because of outdated design, or capabilities it does not have, that you would like the website to have.

You can use web site statistics and feedback from your staff and from customers as you determine how well your current web site is working.

Lastly, create one sentence which describes the primary purpose of your website and one secondary purpose.

Everything on your list should support your primary and secondary purpose, if not, your website may have unnecessary content.

Redesign Considerations

Website redesign can include the following:

• Overall page redesign to make the site more up to date
• Content Management System
• Applications for specific tasks

Setting Realistic Goals

While it is important to develop a list of new features, content or capabilities you want your website to have, it's much more important to first identify one or two realistic goals for your project.

Even if you have an unlimited website budget, by focusing on adding one or two capabilities to your website which can in turn generate more qualified leads may yield more return on your investment in the short run, than spending six to eight months totally redesigning the website with lots of new features.

Establish a Budget

It is important to establish an exact budget, or a budget range for your website redesign.

Even if you don't know what all the website design requests will cost, it is good to know before you start the process of hiring a web designer or web development company what you can spend on the project or at least on the first phase of the project.

While it is a common practice to get several bids or proposals on a website project, everyone will be disappointed when website proposals are based on unrealistic expectations or budgets that just don't allow you to do everything you want to do.

By letting a potential vendor know up front that you can spend a certain amount and that you are looking to get as many features for that price range as possible is a reasonable approach.

Group website features into phases

If you are considering a complete redesign with many new features for your website, consider grouping your requests into two or three phases and having your website developer estimate each phase of the project.

This approach will at least allow you to have the highest priority website requests in the initial redesign, with less urgent website needs to be created in a later phase.

Creating an RFP

A common complaint of clients is that their last website project took far too long to complete, ran far over budget and in the end wasn't what they were expecting. It's easy to blame the website developer who did the work, but often poor communication or poor project organization can be the problem.

A brief outline or a verbal description of what you want or expect with your website redesign is not a good approach because it unfairly puts too much control over the outcome of the project in the web developer's hands.

On the other hand, if you create a Request for Proposal (RFP), and detail all aspects of your project, including goals, expectations as well as specific problems with the website you are wanting to remedy, you are establishing clearly what your concerns, expectations and needs are for the project.

Your web developer will then respond to the RFP with a detailed proposal that addresses all our RFP details. Also, Aan RFP will make it easier for you to get several proposals or bids as one RFP document can be shared with several potential vendors.

While the process of creating a detailed Request For Proposal can be time consuming, it is usually the best way of communicating with potential website developers exactly what your expectations are for the project and will help to give them all the background information they need in order to accurately price the website redesign.

Finding a website designer

Finding a great website designer—someone who is both creative and technically competent, can be a challenge.

Ideally, a recommendation by a colleague or another company you are working with who has first-hand knowledge of what it is like to work with the designer is best.

A Google search will yield hundreds if not thousands of vendors in and around your area, and it is very time consuming to try and locate and evaluate all that are in your area.

One approach is to first go through a list of ten candidates, looking first at portfolios to see if you like the range of work by the designer or company.

Next, try to determine if your project is suitable for the candidate. If a candidate looks to be producing mostly smaller website projects and your website project is a large project with hundreds of pages, you may want to consider a company with the capacity and technical expertise you require.

Narrow your list down to no more than five candidates and call each company, evaluating how each company handles your initial call. If you get voice mail and no one calls you back for several days, this is not a good sign you will receive good customer service throughout the project.

When you do reach a candidate, explain who you are and that you are looking for website designer. More than likely they will ask if you have an RFP or at least some sort of requirements document. This can be emailed.

Comparing Proposals

If you solicit proposals from several companies, you will get proposals that seem similar, but which may be very different once you get into the details.

When evaluating proposals, you need to determine if which proposals demonstrate that the company read and understood your RFP. If you spot proposals that seem to be boilerplate productions, move on to those that are detailed and address all your re-design issues.