Website Redesign: Don't Get Stuck With A Pretty Website... That Doesn't Convert
Stop me if you've heard this joke before:?
?A CMO walks into a new company. They look to their team and say: "Let's do a website redesign!"
The punchline is you'll do all the work (on top of your existing duties).
5 months and $200k later, you're left with a pretty website...that converts worse than your old site. Yikes.
Website redesigns are?incredibly?expensive. They eat up a lot of budget and time. And yet, marketing teams don’t take advantage of their existing data to?learn and test during the redesign process.?
In today's newsletter I'll share what you can do before, during, and after your website redesign project to give you the insights you need to?make sure the redesign doesn't tank your conversion rates.
And because this is such a huge topic, the M2 Community will also be?running a live workshop this Thursday on April 27th at 1PM ET, 10AM PT, to go deep on making conversion a key outcome of your website redesign. This workshop will help you keep your conversion rates high, whether you're neck deep in a redesign, or see one coming up on the horizon.
Just as you wouldn’t go out and drop some serious cash on a designer dress or fancy watch without first trying it on and weighing other options, you should be treating your website redesign as more than just a facelift.?
Website redesigns are a pivotal opportunity to improve how your website converts visitors into customers.
Here's a tip for each step in the process.?
Before Your Website Redesign: Understand your conversion funnel dropoff
If you get one thing right on the new website, it should be your conversion paths. Take a look at your current site’s dropoff points – where are visitors entering, how many pages or fields do they need to fill in before converting? A/B test ways to smooth out the areas with the largest dropoff. To do this: go into your Google Analytics, click on Behavior > Behavior Flow.
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Let’s say you have a 3-step request demo form and you see in your analytics that you have a lot of dropoff after step 2. Use a redirect test to test a new conversion form that removes step 2.
You can also test ways to optimize your demo requests forms, such as adding sections for social proof or simply A/B testing the headline on this page to drive more conversion. When?Contractbook changed the conversion path of their pricing page, they saw a 971% lift in conversions.
During A Website Redesign: Test messaging...EVERYWHERE
Run a multi-variation test for 5 new headlines and subheadlines you’re considering for all of your top landing pages. Everything else about your site is new – why not test some headlines your team has been stewing on? For example, Attentive was able to get a?77% lift in conversion?when they re-worked the headers to match the ad copy on all their most popular landing pages.?
After Your Website Redesign: Segment your site visitors
?New websites are?never?launched perfectly, no matter how hard you try. You’ll need to monitor performance metrics (e.g. site load time, conversion rate, ) closely and compare them to the benchmarks from your old site to ensure you’re trending in the right direction.
If you're noticing things aren't living up to expectations, a great place to start is by segmenting your site visitors. We recommend?getting started with:?
These are just a few ways we recommend baking conversion into your website redesign. Jess Bergson, Customer Growth Lead at Mutiny, put together?a bunch more ways you can influence your website's conversion rate during a redesign. Check them all out.?
And be sure to reserve your seat for the?upcoming M2 Workshop?where Jess will go into details and answer your questions live.