Before you rebuild your website, ask these five questions
A practical starting point for reviewing your website, deciding what needs to change and agreeing what a rebuild should include.
Part of our guide: The Complete Guide to Upgrading an Outdated Business Website
A website rebuild starts with understanding what your business needs. Before choosing colours or comparing layouts, take a little time to look at the information your customers need and the steps you want them to take.
These five questions give you a starting point for that conversation.
1. Can visitors understand what you do?
Read your homepage as someone who has never heard of your business. Does it explain your main services clearly? Can a visitor tell whether you work with businesses like theirs, or in their area?
Make a short list of anything that needs an explanation. Those points can help you decide what to say first and what belongs on a separate service page.
Thinking about your own rebuild?
Tell us about your business, your current website and what you would like to improve. We will help you work out the next step.
2. What should someone do next?
A useful next step might be to read about a service, ask a question or discuss a quote. Choose the action that makes sense for the page and make it easy to find.
Walk through that action yourself. If someone wants to get in touch, check that the route is clear and that the information you ask for is relevant to their enquiry.
3. How does the site feel on a phone?
Open the main pages on a small screen. Read the headings, follow the navigation and try the contact form. Look for text that feels cramped, links that are difficult to select or content that runs off the edge.
A proposed rebuild should give you a working mobile layout to inspect, alongside the desktop version.
4. What exactly is included?
Write down the pages, content and features you expect. A brochure site, a booking tool and an editing dashboard involve different work, so the proposal should identify what is included.
Check how corrections will be handled, whether new content needs to be supplied and how requests outside the agreed work will be quoted.
5. What happens after launch?
Ask about ownership, hosting, domain arrangements and email before agreeing a changeover. Confirm who will make future updates and how those changes will be priced.
For our approach, you can read how the rebuild process works and review pricing and ownership. A separate demo lets you explore the proposed website before deciding on the next step.
Turn the answers into a rebuild plan
Use the step-by-step website replacement guide to bring these decisions together. It explains how to inventory the current site, protect useful URLs and prepare the changeover.
Before appointing a supplier, collect the information a web designer needs and agree how the business will assess the result. Then use the pre-launch website checklist and post-launch checks to turn promises into evidence.
