Prepping for your Website Redesign

By now at least some of you marketers have been asked to begin preparing marketing budgets for FY 2020. And chances are at least a third of you will be budgeting for a website redesign. Websites age in dog years and what looked cutting edge and clean three years ago now looks dated, dumpy and dog-eared. And of course some of your competitors are planning on refreshing their websites – or have already done so - and the tyranny of the market demands that you keep up (not to mention your salesforce).

So what’s the best way to come up with the magic budget number? Unless you are redesigning the website in-house (generally a bad idea) or having the CEO’s son do it (worse idea) then you will probably be meeting with a marketing communications agency who will be asking you lots of questions. Here’s a list of questions you need to be prepared to answer:

• What do you like about your current website? What don’t you like?
• Did your website meet the objectives you set out for it? Where did it fall short?
• What do your website statistics tell you? Are you losing too many customers before you can engage them?
• How do you stack up versus your competition’s websites? How are you competing on Search Engines?
• Are there other internal constituents that have a stake in the new website? Sales? Human Resources? Investor Relations? How well is it meeting their needs?
• What new functionality do you need to add? Customer Portal? E-Commerce? Social Media? Lead Generation? Marketing Automation?
• How does your website support your digital marketing strategy?
• Is there anything business-wise that your new website may need to accommodate in the near future? Acquisitions? New Products?
• When your website redesign is completed, how will you measure success?

Remember, think big! Ask for the stars. Chances are the finance geeks will make you settle for the moon. But, as any salesperson can tell you… you’ll never know unless you ask.