10 Tips to Maximize Usability During A Website Redesign

Few people enjoy going back and revising or correcting what they’ve done before.  But, that’s exactly what you could be faced with, if usability is not included in your website’s redesign process.
Examples of companies not taking customers into account during a redesign and then finding their redesigned website to be less customer friendly (and therefore getting less orders) than the old one are not uncommon.   But you can greatly improve the odds that your website will be a big hit with your customers if you include usability in website redesign.

Here are ten quick tips to keep in mind. Most are pretty basic, but they can have a pretty profound effect on your website’s redesign.

1. Review your purpose. Who are my visitors?  What do I want them to do?  What do they expect from this site?  How can I meet their expectations?
2. Revisit your navigation. Make sure your navigation structure makes immediate sense to your visitors and that they’re always just a few clicks from what they want.  Divide or combine pages to keep text within a page or two.
3. Repeat your design. Aesthetic consistency is one of the best ways to enhance usability in website redesign.  Keep your logo and tag line and major design elements up where visitors can see them, preferably with visual navigation indicators to let them know where they are.
4. Reconsider the extras. Is the splash screen really necessary, or does it waste time?  Do you really need the flash video on the side of your home page that slows the loading process?  Are the spurious little animations all over your body text really that attractive?
5. Reinstall your web analytics. This is your chance to see how your redesign will fare.  You’ll need to tinker more with the stuff in the near future, so start tracking its performance now.
6. Recheck your copy. Usability in website redesign may be improved by restyling your text to fit your new pages.  Don’t just copy and paste—keep text loose on opening pages and dense on informational pages.  Split into sections with headings, and ensure the organization makes sense.
7. Realign your layouts. Make your pages scannable to the average eye, front-loading vital information and using graphs, bullets, and other visual aids to communicate information quickly.
8. Revaluate your media. Excessive pictures or animation may significantly reduce usability in website redesign if they don’t deserve to deliver a concise message.  Make sure the eye has someplace to rest on your page after going over all the glitz.
9. Reconnect to your visitors. The best websites communicate information quickly and concisely to visitors while also projecting an attractive persona.  Give them a sense of the kind of company you are with a warm personality that pervades your site.  Include staff biographies and personal comments.
10. Respect your visitors, as well. Give them whatever they want quickly, trusting that their satisfaction will translate to a better feeling about your company or organization in general.

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