How to know if your website is outdated, and what Brafton's UX specialists suggest to be included in your website redesign.

Is an outdated website holding back your marketing results? Your content can be excellent – but 94 percent of people admit their first impression of a website based on its appearance. You’re doing yourself a disservice if you’re hanging onto your outdated site design.

This is challenge many of our clients at Brafton face: They’re spending money on content, but publishing it on sites that aren’t optimized for success. The solution: Our graphic designers have joined forces with our web development teams to create website redesigns that implement UX and SEO best practices. It’s a much needed service – and whether you do it with us or on your own, here’s why we recommend a website refresh:

  • It only takes 0.05 seconds to make a snap judgement of a website.
  • When working with clients on their graphics and UX, our team finds that only about 10 percent of sites are up to date with the latest trends that users expect.

There’s no doubt these statistics are discouraging, but that’s where our UX design team comes in. Lead by UX Manager Hollie Farrahi, we like to think of the team as consultative experts with artists’ eyes. Here are some of the most important UX factors to take into consideration, and how to ensure brand aesthetic is kept on point:

Fuschia_Icon_GraphicsFirst, assess the overall aesthetic

Our designers scour the overall aesthetic of the site first and foremost, determining the user experience by effectiveness, seeing what web technologies they’re currently using (CMS, up-to-date webtrends etc.), and what drives their business. These are what determine the overall outcome of the mock-ups for the clients blog/article pages.

Depending on how current or not-so current the client site is determines how up-to-date the design is, the most important factors that need to be considered:

  • Readability. As content marketers, we need to make it easier for the user to digest the blogs, landing pages and other written copy we provide them in a web-sensible manner.
  • Functionality. Generally speaking, users are lazy. If we can make the experience easier to navigate to the content types they want, then that’s what we do with a basic understand of how users digest web content and where we automatically associate where to find certain aspects on a website.

Need a refresher on UX basics? Download our free Marketers Guide to UX.

Fuschia_Icon_GraphicsDon’t start over: Evolve the best aspects of what you already have

Design Director Ken Boostrom always recommends “evolving a brand” rather than starting from scratch.

He recommends continuing with the elements of your brand that make sense, like:

  • Color palate
  • Typography
  • Repurposing old photos in the archive

While also giving it a fresh appeal, like:

  • Adding videos
  • Creating illustrations
  • Implementing new calls to action to drive business

Don’t forget the to implement integration best practices:

  • Branded favicons
  • NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) in footer
  • Social Media Icons

Complete list of integration best practices.  

The results: Two real-life success stories

Fuschia_Icon_GraphicsSite revamp increases content-driven conversions by 300%

Our client in the home decor industry moved two calls to action into prime real estate on its blog content pages and saw conversions triple over the course of three months. On top of that success, the company worked with its content marketing strategist team to assign dollar values to various on-site goals and determined that its blog content was responsible for a significant share of retail sales. Keep reading…

Fuschia_Icon_GraphicsGraphic redesign increases homepage portal registrations by 200%

We updated three calls to action on one of our client’s websites with a streamlined design that looked better and generated more conversions. In the course of a month, we saw the number of portal registrations increase 200 percent. Keep reading…

 

Interested in learning about Brafton’s website design offerings? Contact us today!

Molly Buccini is Brafton's community manager. She joined the team with a background in digital journalism and social media. She's a theatre nerd, pop culture junkie and lover of summertime.