Successful website relaunch with WordPress

Have you ever carried out a website relaunch? If so, then you know that it can be very chaotic. On the one hand, there’s the sales department, the marketing department and even the management. On the other hand, there are the technical requirements. There are many reasons for a website relaunch and different requirements that need to be reconciled. Often it’s not just about simply getting a new website.

Define requirements together as a team

The requirements for a relaunch are usually written down on one page and handed over to a web agency in the form of a briefing. As soon as it comes to implementation, the euphoria is gone. Requirements are implemented incorrectly. For example, there is suddenly more work involved. Hundreds of emails. Annoyed employees. There is another way.

Requirements can be explained, discussed and concretized in a direct exchange. Modern design thinking and user experience design methods support the process. In this format, you can use the full creative potential of everyone involved. Your employees are the experts in your company. Nobody knows your company and your products better. And everyone can actively participate in the implementation of the new website. Decisions made together are therefore easier to understand.

Plan at least 1 to 3 days for the website relaunch workshop.

Helpful UX methods

• Personas (examples of visitors to your website and products)
• Paper prototyping (creative process to visualize the design and structure of a page)
• Customer journey and storyboards (describe the “journey” of a potential customer from first contact to purchase)
• Google Design Sprint (workshop lasting several days to develop a solution for specific problems)
• User story mapping (defining requirements together in an agile way)
• You can find even more methods here: UX methods

Business success through a website relaunch: defining business goals, increasing sales and conversions

In the workshop, the team creates a general understanding of the company’s goals. Teamwork is essential for a successful website relaunch. A web developer must know how to implement a new feature correctly. The UX designer can better design the user experience if the business goals are clear. The marketing team can better plan and implement campaigns. And so on.

Conclusion: A successful website relaunch and the achievement of goals only works as a team. If everyone involved understands the “big picture”, then the implementation can work successfully.

Making customers happy: A website relaunch is the perfect opportunity for user experience design

Everyone is talking about user experience design. Large companies have been benefiting from UX design for some time now. But what is it actually about? In a nutshell: It’s about the positive and smooth user experience when using your website or app. Not to be confused with web design, which is about the look and feel of the website.

With the help of customer journeys, for example, you can think through the steps that users need to complete as a team. For example, all the steps that are necessary to complete an order. Together, the needs and goals of visitors are brought into focus. Make your customers happy!

Grab a pen and paper

Don’t be shy! You don’t have to be a web designer. Experienced designers will do that later anyway. But your expert knowledge can be enormously helpful for further implementation.

With the help of paper prototyping, for example, you can create the perfect structure for a landing page. Either in small teams or individually. At the end of such a session, you will have a valuable collection of ideas and many new approaches. These are very valuable for further implementation.

A UX check can be very helpful for improving the user experience. Existing problems on a website can be quickly identified and rectified.

Conclusion: User experience design is of great importance for the success of websites. It is particularly important to pay special attention to this when relaunching a website. Together as a team, the knowledge and experience of all those involved is utilized. A creative process that is a lot of fun!

SEO during a website relaunch: be found better in search engines

There are several key points to consider when it comes to SEO:

• Agree on one to three focus pages that you want to rank better for. Pay particular attention to these landing pages. A selected page is optimized for a primary keyword. Define keywords with which the page should be found. Create unique content: Develop high-quality content. Incorporate different media types and content (videos, images, etc.). Work out frequently asked questions (FAQs). What does such a site need to provide users with an optimal user experience? What are the visitors’ goals?
• An SEO audit helps you to identify problems and determine the current status. Technical weaknesses are identified. These can prevent search engines from indexing your website and content correctly. A competitor analysis can also be carried out. Existing content is checked for quality. You get an overview of search terms for which your website already ranks. The Google Search Console and Google Analytics are also very helpful for this. This allows you to work out your own SEO strategy.
• Do not lose existing rankings in search engines. Make sure that so-called 301 redirects are set up. This will allow your users to access your pages via search results without error messages even after the website relaunch.
• Consider the use of paid SEM campaigns (Google Ads, social media, …)
• Use the free Screaming Frog SEO Spider tool to get an overview of your currently indexed pages and identify any problems

Conclusion: SEO is a long-term process. Ongoing optimization of content and continuous monitoring are essential. Create high-quality content and content for people during the relaunch. Optimize a page (landing page) and its content with a primary keyword. Determine the current status in order to make success measurable later on. Approach the topic step by step. The effort required for content SEO optimization is often underestimated. It is better to start with fewer focus topics and expand them later.

Corporate design and design systems for a website relaunch

Your company may already have design guidelines (design system). If not, talk to your agency about your company’s corporate identity. What colors do you use? Which fonts? How do you want your company to be perceived?

Many companies have a design system that is strongly oriented towards print products. Sometimes the design system needs to be expanded to include new definitions for digital products. Strict adherence to definitions does not always make sense. Especially if there are no separate definitions for digital content. Discuss with your agency how you want to deal with this.

Responsive web design is actually already standard today. Most access today is via mobile devices. Demand responsive designs for all breakpoints: Desktop, tablet and smartphones.

Conclusion: Give priority to proven and familiar element behaviors (such as buttons and call to actions) over your own implementations. Frameworks such as Bootstrap or Google Material Design usually offer a good user experience. Pay attention to the recognizability of your brand. Do not insist on exact adherence to design guidelines. Especially if your design system does not include definitions for digital products.

Speed: make your website faster

Short loading times are extremely important for the user experience and also for SEO. There are a few things to bear in mind during implementation. Choose dedicated WordPress hosting with optimized caching. This allows the content of a website to be displayed more quickly. The best results are achieved with cloud hosting. A managed cloud hosting solution from Cloudways, for example, is ideal for this. Cloudways has recently started offering a professional CDN solution in collaboration with Cloudflare. For just a few euros per month, you get automatic optimization for mobile devices, automatic image optimization, enterprise CDN, protection against DDOS attacks and much more.

It is often images that lead to longer loading times. Ensure correct sizes and good compression when inserting images. Use suitable image formats. JPG is well suited for images. PNG is well suited for graphics. The use of modern image formats such as the new WebP format can be helpful.

The following optimizations have a good effect on performance:

• Activate GZIP compression for CSS and JS files
• Merge CSS and JS files to reduce HTTP requests
• Consider external resources that are loaded via Google Tag Manager, for example
• Consider using a content delivery network (CDN) to deliver content faster
• Use few plug-ins
• Optimize your database
• Check the caching settings (frontend and backend) of the server

Conclusion: Short loading times are essential for UX and SEO. Choose a hosting provider that specializes in WordPress sites. Preferably with an existing caching solution. Pay attention to the size of the images when creating the content. Take the above points into account during implementation.

Clean web development with the popular WordPress content management system

When commissioning web development, look for references to WordPress projects. Are there customers who are currently being supported? Find out which measures will ensure good performance of the new website.

Talk about how a clean implementation and technical documentation will be implemented. Is a possible handover to another developer guaranteed? Can other developers easily make adjustments? Is there a versioning of your project with Git?

Ask which frameworks are used. Clarify the use of page builders. Page builders such as Divi and Elementor allow you to create appealing designs.

Due to the popularity of WordPress, the content management system unfortunately offers an attack surface for malware. Install WordPress updates and plug-ins as soon as they are released. Agree a maintenance contract with the agency.

Consider using a firewall for your WordPress website. Activate two-factor authentication for the WordPress login page. Ensure that the entire website is backed up regularly. You can use cronjobs to bring them into your company at regular intervals.

Conclusion: Ask for references on WordPress projects. Address issues such as performance, security and documentation. Arrange a maintenance contract to keep your WordPress site up to date at all times. This prevents malware from gaining a foothold. Find out more about development.

We hope our top tips will help you with your next website relaunch. We wish you every success! 😀

Frequently asked questions (FAQ)