How To Redesign A Website Without Losing Your Mind
Ugh.
That’s the sound you hear when a business starts down the path of a wholesale website redesign.
I’ve participated in my fair share of redesigns, and witnessed others. And the one thing I’ve learned from the process is that it is painful. Very painful.
There are delays. There are moments of great insecurity (Is a drop-down menu really the right choice? I don’t know!). There are moments of sheer terror when you wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat petrified that your months of work will result in a giant disappointment.
Sounds awful, right?
Well, we’re in the early stages of re- imagining our website, WBJournal.com, so I decided to take advantage of my position as a newspaper columnist and do a little research into website design and how not to make it a completely painful process.
I turned to Christian Santillo, who is in the web communications department at the College of the Holy Cross. He helps oversee the Holy Cross website as well as e-mail and digital marketing at the school. The college was honored by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education for its newly designed admissions website, admissions.holycross.edu, and publications. Since they won an award, I figured they must be doing something right and I asked for Santillo’s advice on what to do — and not do — when redesigning a website. Here are some the tips he shared with me.
Set a timeline. Santillo said that one of the major challenges in the redesign of the admissions microsite was that it had many components, including tie-ins with print collateral, like brochures. With so many moving pieces, and several outside vendors, he said setting benchmarks was critical.
“We created a master timeline so there were no surprises along the way,” he said. “Everyone was in agreement from the beginning as to what dates were the most important.”
Do the research. This may be the step that most often gets skipped in the redesign process. Most websites are badly overdue for a revamp, and businesses jump right into design and forget to do their homework. Santillo said the Holy Cross team allowed time at the beginning of the process to see how people were using the admissions site. That kind of knowledge can really help direct your design priorities.
Meet regularly. In almost all cases, a website redesign involves a lot of stakeholders, including various departments within an organization, senior managers and outside vendors. That was certainly the case for Holy Cross.
“We had this big working team, which was great, but working with such a big team can be a bit challenging,” Santillo said.
To make sure everyone was on the same page, Santillo had regular meetings, either physical or virtual, to check in and make sure they were sticking with the timeline. He also used software called Basecamp that allows you to manage projects.
Continuous improvement. Your website launched and the boss is happy. You’re done, right? No, according to Santillo.
“It’s never finished,” he said. “The key is using analytics to track the success and failures” of your new site. Santillo also recommended bringing in focus groups at regular intervals to evaluate the website and help direct improvements over time.
So that made it sound easy, right? Set up a timeline, do some homework and have regular meetings and you should be on your way to a fully-enabled, dynamic website.
Of course it’s not that easy. A task as complicated as a website overhaul is always going to be difficult. There are going to be compromises and moments of self doubt. But with Santillo’s tips in mind, the process can be, well, a little less painful.
Got news for our Digital Diva column?
E-mail Christina H. Davis at cdavis@wbjournal.com.
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