PREPARING

FOR A WEBSITE
REDESIGN

HOW-TO GUIDE
 Preparing for a Website Redesign
HOW-TO GUIDE

This report has been designed to provide practical advice for preparing for a website redesign
project.

Read this brief report to learn how to:

Conduct a Website Effectiveness Audit

Gain Approval for Website Redesign
Define Website Program Requirements
Build a Website Program Action Plan
Develop your New Website
Drive Traffic to your Website
Proactively Maintain your Website

Read this report to learn how to prepare your organization for effective website development. Use
our tools to develop a Website Program Action Plan that meets your requirements.

Conducting a Website Effectiveness Audit

Over 70% of mid-sized organizations are currently involved in a website redesign initiative, or
have one planned for this year. Before you go to your CFO to get some budget for this program,
conduct a brief website effectiveness audit to build the need.

1. Evaluate Internal Web Capabilities: use our SWOT Analysis Tool to identify your strengths,
weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, when it comes to website program effectiveness.
2. Conduct an Industry Analysis: determine if there is a general trend in your industry regarding
website design and development. Document your insights with our STEP Industry Analysis
Tool and Competitive Analysis Tool.
3. Perform a Competitive Website Audit: learn website design best practices by reading our
Evaluating Website Effectiveness Report, then perform a Competitive Website Analysis,
and insert your results into our Web Content Audit Tool..

2 PREPARING FOR A WEBSITE REDESIGN HOW-TO GUIDE

Gain Approval for Website Redesign

1. Identify Key Success Factors: it is critical that you understand, and document any risks and
contingencies for this project. Use our Key Success Factors Tool to start the process of
building a sound, conservative business case.
2. Build Website Program Charter: use our Project Charter Template to document project
purpose, scope, and plan. Your project plan should include start date, anticipated end date,
project team, communications plan, deliverables, and milestones.
3. Create Website Program Business Case: use our Business Case Template to outline the
qualitative/quantitative benefits as compared to the costs and risks of the initiative.
4. Achieve Approval for Website Program: use your Business Case to sell this idea internally to
senior management.

Define Website Requirements

Over 70% of mid-sized organizations are currently involved in a website redesign initiative, or
have one planned for this year. Before you go to your CFO to get some budget for this program,
conduct a brief website effectiveness audit to build the need.

1. Determine Website Objectives & Measures: what are your future web marketing initiatives?
What analytics/metrics do you want to have in place? Use our Web Marketing Scorecard and
Web Metrics Reporting Schedule to define your high-level objectives, targets, initiatives, and
measures for this program.
2. Gather Functional Requirements by Department: work with each department to develop a
Web Requirements Document which can be handed off to I/T for technical implementation.
This document will act as your list of deliverables.
3. Prioritize Website Requirements: have a meeting with the website team and work through
our Web Requirements Priority Tool. This exercise is critical for achieving consensus.
4. Analyze Infrastructure Requirements: website infrastructure is composed of People,
Processes, and Technology. Use our Website Infrastructure Checklist to determine if you
have any gaps in your existing infrastructure.
5. Perform a Web Program GAP Analysis: use our GAP Analysis Tool to evaluate your func-
tional & infrastructure requirements. Determine the feasibility of closing each gap and make
adjustments to your requirements document accordingly.
6. Decide to Outsource or Build Internally: work with your project sponsor to complete a Build
vs. Buy Analysis and make a decision with regard to website staffing and support.

3 PREPARING FOR A WEBSITE REDESIGN HOW-TO GUIDE

Drive Traffic to your Website

1. Develop an External Linking Strategy: search engines like Google and Yahoo make assump-
tions about the “importance” of your website, based on many factors including external links
that point to your website.

Consider implementing an affiliate or online marketing initiative to drive traffic. Affiliates are part-
ners, or other third-party websites who promote your organization and send traffic from their
website to yours. If your business does not lend itself to affiliate marketing, consider ads.

2. Submit your Website to Search Engines: Google and Yahoo need to index your website
before it will appear in the search results organically. You can go to each search engine directly
and look for a link or tab that says “Submit” or “Index”.
3. Conduct Search Engine Optimization: there is organic and paid search. Read Simplifying
Search Engine Optimization for more help in this area. If you know you want keyword ads,
read Pull Prospects with Google AdWords.
4. Build up your Reference Library: to promote repeat visitors, add to your base of whitepapers,
case studies, webcasts, best practices, and other collateral, on a very regular basis.
5. Integrate Website with Other Channels: consider using your new website for lead genera-
tion (website demo), post press releases, promote events and speaking engagements, add a
newsletter to build up your email marketing database, etc.
6. Consider Adding a Customer-Facing Blog: many organizations are using blogs to informally
communicate with customers, and to gather company & product feedback. Use our Blog
Policy Template if you plan to use this new medium.

Proactively Maintain your Website

1. Develop a Maintenance Schedule: set up a weekly or monthly website maintenance schedule

to update content, check for broken links, evaluate structure, and add new features.
2. Re-organize as Content Grows: most websites start with a base-level of content and add
incrementally over time. As your amount of content grows, you may need to re-organize the
website to keep navigation simple and easy for end users.
3. Evaluate Website Program Annually: once you have completed this initiative, don't let three
years go by before you make any strategic changes. Make a point to re-evaluate your website
program on an annual basis, at a minimum.

4 PREPARING FOR A WEBSITE REDESIGN HOW-TO GUIDE

Bottom Line

Corporate websites are one of the most important aspects of the marketing mix, yet surprisingly,
most organizations are not happy with the results they are achieving through online marketing.
You don't need to have technical skills or a huge budget to make your website an effective lead
generation and customer support tool.

Start by conducting an audit of your current effectiveness; build a business case for a redesign
project; define your business requirements; develop an action plan; design your website; and
drive traffic to demonstrate measurable marketing results.

Based on the best practices described in this report, and tools provided, you should be able to
get started with a website program. If you need more clarity, contact Demand Metric and we will
provide you with more tailored advice.

5 PREPARING FOR A WEBSITE REDESIGN HOW-TO GUIDE

 Action Plan
STEP 1 - Target Audience

Define your Target

1 Target
Audience Audience(s) & Purpose

Use Demand Metric's Website

Redesign Playbook to pull
2 Organize together all of the internal,
external, and GAP analyses
that have been completed so
far. This document will provide
a high-level overview of the
entire program for any senior
3 Protect
executives who now need to
get involved.

If you haven't done so already,

read our Evaluating Website
Effectiveness Report to
4 Integrate understand what makes a solid
website.

Most websites cater to

prospective customers,
existing customers, potential
5 Staffing employees, investors, media,
partners, & community. Think
about the objectives of each
audience to create pages and
sections that deliver valuable
content based on each
6 Launch
perspective.

6 PREPARING FOR A WEBSITE REDESIGN HOW-TO GUIDE

 Action Plan
STEP 2 - Organize

Target Organize Content &

1 Audience Structure

Work to build a hierarchy of

pages (which will become

2 Organize your sitemap) and focus on

minimizing the amount of
'clicks' it takes for a user to
get to their end destination.

Your homepage should make

3 Protect it very easy to navigate to any
section or sub-section off the
website.

Many organizations like to

create a URL/favorites icon to

4 Integrate reinforce their brand or logo.

Go to www.favicon.com to
learn more.

5 Staffing

6 Launch

7 PREPARING FOR A WEBSITE REDESIGN HOW-TO GUIDE

 Action Plan
STEP 3 - Protect

Target Establish Privacy Policy

1 Audience and Terms of Use

Protect your organization

from potential litigation
2 Organize resulting from website usage.

Use our Privacy Policy and

Terms of Use templates to
save time with getting these
documents over to legal for

3 Protect approval.

If you have a Blog on your

website, you may need a
Blog Policy.

4 Integrate

5 Staffing Privacy Policy

VIEW RESOURCE

6 Launch

8 PREPARING FOR A WEBSITE REDESIGN HOW-TO GUIDE

 Action Plan
STEP 4 - Integrate

Target Integrate Analytics and

1 Audience Web Reporting

If you aren't using analytics,

read Free Web Analytics
2 Organize
from Google.

3 Protect

Free Web Analytics from Google

VIEW RESOURCE
4 Integrate

5 Staffing

6 Launch

9 PREPARING FOR A WEBSITE REDESIGN HOW-TO GUIDE

 Action Plan
STEP 5 - Staffing

Target Handoff to Technical Staff

1 Audience for Development

Now that you have your

functional requirements
2 Organize
completed, and have
organized the content and
structure of the website,
handoff the delivery
component of the project to
3 Protect your technical web team.

4 Integrate

5 Staffing

6 Launch

10 PREPARING FOR A WEBSITE REDESIGN HOW-TO GUIDE

 Action Plan
STEP 6 - Launch

Target Build, Test, & Launch

1 Audience Website

Work closely with the

development team to ensure
2 Organize
that the website that is built
accurately reflects the web
requirements document.

Conduct external penetration

testing or 'white-hat hacking'
3 Protect
to ensure your website is
secure and will not allow
unauthorized access.

Test each page and

document to ensure that the
4 Integrate proper business rules have
been applied (i.e. whitepaper
download form creates a lead
for Sales, sends a download
link, and has a real-time
message to thank them for
5 Staffing
their interest).

If everything works, launch

your new website with some
internal/external promotions.

6 Launch

11 PREPARING FOR A WEBSITE REDESIGN HOW-TO GUIDE

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