Really important to keep your business website looking and working perfectly, most established websites would have evolved from table design to tableless (html / css design) to CMS systemts to Responsive website designs so you need to ensure your website looks fresh / current and with the correct info and services that you provide and ensure that you can update and maintain it when your business evolves. The website now needs to respond accordingly to the way it is viewed to ensure it works efficiently on any browser and any mobile device.
Here is an example website redesign request that demonstrates the need to desire from a business owner to keep their website current.
[Website Redesign Request] What do you think about our current website? I was recently thinking that the time has come to redesign or change the current website as its 5 years old and starting to look dated since we first brought our website to you and got you to design it. We need something simple that we can change ourselves (we have an admin girl that will be able to put on new content), I think the website needs to be easy to navigate and easy to change using a CMS system. The website we have is beautiful looking but not mobile friendly. It seems outdated in design etc
Is this something you could quote me on please? I need to make some immediate website updates / changes, you sent me some links to the CMS system for that but I appear to have misplaced them please send them again.
[Webdesigners – Project Manager] We agree and was discussing your website portfolio during our weekly team talk the other day, all new websites we are creating are ‘mobile / tablet friendly’ they call it ‘responsive webdesign’ and they are CMS (user updatable) but firstly regarding these latest changes that have been going on months I believe we are waiting for your replies am am not at fault in the delay as we sent the replies with the questions months ago but will endeavour to get them completed shortly.
The recent changes have been dealt with in the email previous to this. Regarding the idea to convert the existing website / news section (all 600 pages) to a responsive / CMS website with a new design / look and feel, there are some considerations
1, There are lots of different page layouts currently that we assume you will want to keep (Meaning pages on your site are very different in the layouts)
2, Redesign / updating a site must be done with care and there are lots of technical thing to consider to ensure it look / works and functions perfect online and within the search engines for example all existing pages need to be ‘mapped’ to the new ones so we don’t harm the site’s great current SEO. This is very important for incoming internal links also.
3, What ideas / changes / additions do you have for a new site? What sites have you seen recently that you like, what colour schemes and new functionality do you have in mind for your new site. What are you competitors doing that you are not doing?
4, Do you have a new look in mind? If so find one you really like or look thought these lists of responsive wordpress themes to give us a basis to what you want to achieve
[Website Redesign Request] We are hoping to get the new look website done fairly quickly so it would be great if you would complete our final updates then let us decide the best way forward. Thank you for the updates done so far. We are having a meeting this afternoon regarding the new site changes etc. I will email you later with ideas etc. We are also looking at themes from the links you sent us.
We have spent several weeks looking at options for the new website and it is with regret that we have decided to have it built here as one of my friends has opened a website design company. This is nothing against your work at all, we are doing it for convenience for us. The new site will be built on wordpress by a local firm which is based 15 minutes from my home. They will do it for only a few hundred pounds and they insist that they can manage a redesign project and not lose any of my Google ranking. Obviously still want our relationship to continue with regards to our other websites however I understand if you do not want this to continue.
I will be needing the access codes to the old website so we can get things moving as soon as possible. They will also be hosting the site for us too.
[Webdesigners – Project Manager] Please quickly read this and tell me what you think, its my first thoughts after you told me you want to redesign the website and in response to your email earlier today. Following industry trends our last 25 websites have all been wordpress responsive ones as that is the way the industry is turning, we have great experience and knowledge of your website, seo, your business sector and have a business relationship that has been built on trust and results over the last 5 years so want that to continue.
We rarely have clients that move away and in our 6 year history with over 500 clients we have had only 2 move away and I know 1 of them has regretted this as their new website design company have proved to be unreliable and unable to match what he had before. Here is what I think we want from a redesign of your site and should be considered:
1, Full WordPress / CMS – Mobile friendly / responsive website
2, Organise Content more logically – improve navigation
3, Booking / Contact information should be more prominent and on each course / trip page
4, Multi-lingual option (allows each page to be translated)
5, Social icons should be more prominent
6, News section needs to be integrated into main menu
7, Review all content and re-organise and add more content where appropriate
8, Redesign all menus / content / galleries will be updatable by yourself
Considerations
1, Your website is now large / complicated and nothing should be lost.
2, The site has nearly 800 indexed pages in Google / Bing and Yahoo.
3, Your website promotion (SEO) has been carefully crafted on this site and any changes need to be done carefully not to risk this.
4, Our business relationship is valuable on our other business venture and I proposed previously that this could be taken over by yourself if / when you decide to move on.
5, We have built and promoted both your sites for you achieving great SEO results.
6, Your main website is renewed for 2 years in advance.
7, Your websites are now on an award winning UK based ‘stable’ hosting company with ourselves as support and backup for disaster recovery.
8, SEO ranking success in google for both sites with competitive search terms
Icing on the cake
If you decide to continue to work with us
1, Will give you free temporary ownership of other website we own in your business sector (you get all emails from site)
2, Will match / exceed any existing agreement you have made with any other company
3, Will ‘assure you that if we do your website redesign that you won’t lose rankings / visitor numbers and will increase visitor numbers over the next 12 months
[Website Redesign Request] On reflection I think we were mad to consider moving from your company to another ‘unknown’ website design company and after a bit of investigation it appears they dont have the skills / expertise and SEO know how that you clearly have. We will be staying with your company and want you to upgrade our website to a Responsive design. Really appreciate your ‘extras’ and the fact we know you can deliver results for us.
