When a company realises that its site no longer meets the expectations of users, and when new features and functionalities need to be added, there’s no way around a site redesign. You might be responsible for the revamp, or perhaps you’re a web analyst in a company that’s planning to redesign its website. In any case, between all your various content, the different page layouts, and the numerous paths that can be taken on your site, it is often difficult to make a decision. A website’s success, all the same, relies on a company’s ability to make the right choices. What new features and functionalities should be added to the site? What should be removed? What should be kept? These are very difficult decisions, but web analytics can provide precious help in making the right ones. Below is a non-exhaustive list of essential and unavoidable analyses which should be considered as part of a site revamp.
What needs to be corrected?
Your website has an overall goal, for example to generate sales, registrations, requests for contact, bookings, and the list goes on. Each website must ensure that this main goal is accomplished by its visitors. The aim of a site revamp is to correct anything and everything that prevents your customers or prospects from doing what you would like them to do on your site.
– The entry page analysis
The first page that Internet users consult on your site, the entry page, is where many visits come to an end. Analysing the bounce rate on these pages will detect the main pages from which Internet users leave your site straight away.
– The navigational path analysis
Analysing the navigational paths will highlight the main pathways taken by your Internet users. Pathways including actions like going back to the same page, reloading the same page, and page sequences being repeated on several different occasions are all signs of difficulties experienced by your site visitors.
– The conversion funnel analysis
Analysing conversion funnels reveals areas where prospects leave your site and also shows which pages they visit after they leave your funnel just a few steps before conversion. The pages from which Internet users leave your funnel can provide information on your funnel’s potential problems.
– The internal search engine analysis
The Internal search engine analyses show your search engine’s ability to find and return searched content, and also shows your site’s ability to efficiently direct visitors, without them needing to use the internal search engine. For example, you can see the pages on which users had the most difficulty finding what they were looking for by examining the page view analysis along with the internal search engine results analysis.
Which content or features should be removed?
Another aim of a site revamp is to get rid of part of the site in order to better meet your target audience’s expectations. One of the pitfalls of many sites is that they try to please everyone and provide content to all audience types, at the risk of offering a poor user experience to the true target audience.
– Analysing traffic volume of different site sections
This analysis evaluates how often different sections of the site are used. Some site sections will not have a lot of traffic, meaning that these sections can be removed from the site.
Tips:
If you fear that removing a section or a page from your site will have serious consequences, you can use segmentation applied to this page. In doing so, you will be able to compare performance of visits using the section in question with visits that haven’t.
The data will allow you to imagine what would happen if you removed a specific page or section. For example, if you would like to remove a page from your site, remember that any traffic landing directly on this page will be lost. It’s up to you to judge if this represents a significant amount of traffic, and if so, the quality of the traffic.
– Page click analyses
The ClickZone analyses counts the number of clicks made on the different links and zones that make up a page. You can verify which links are the most clicked and the most likely to direct users to targeted content. This analysis is most important on the home page, as the most difficult choices to make are those associated with the home page. Once again, one of the pitfalls of many websites is to suggest links to all different types of content available on the site. This analysis will help you make a firm decision, reduce the number of possibilities from the home page, and increase the chances of a click.
– Page scroll analyses
The HeatScale analysis provides an image of what Internet users have viewed on a page by studying the vertical page scroll. In cumulative mode, we can obtain information on the percentage and number of visits having displayed each horizontal zone of the page.
This chart highlights the different zones of a page which have not been viewed. Depending on the aim of the page, a decision might be made to remove elements which are not viewed by Internet users, or to delete elements so that only the most important information can be seen by the largest audience possible.
Which elements should be kept at all costs?
Your current site performs well on certain aspects. A website is never poor all around, and your visitors enjoy your site thanks to certain elements. Changing or removing these elements from your site could lead to dissatisfaction on behalf of your loyal visitors. So, you need to be aware of your current site’s strong points so that you can keep them for the next version of the site.
– Analysing converting visits
Performing segmentation on visits which successfully lead to conversion reveal the most convincing entry pages, the most taken browsing paths, the most persuasive browsing tools, etc. It is just as important to identify the strong points of your current site as it is the its weak points, as you can rely on the strong points during the site revamp to help your site reach its goal.
– Analysing the strongest performing pages of your site in terms of SEO
A large part of traffic to some of your site pages comes from search engines. It would seem advantageous then to retain the content and structure of these pages, and use them to improve the SEO of new pages added.
You can also use these existing pages to benefit your site as a whole by creating links from the existing pages to new pages to transmit the high level of confidence from the search engines.
– Analysing attractive sections of your site
Studying the page viewed immediately after the home page will reveal which sections spark interest and grab Internet user attention most effectively. The placement of links to these sections should be kept on the home page, as should the manner in which the sections are displayed.
Many of AT Insight’s performance audits have taken place at the occasion of a site revamp. The service provided is made up of two audits. The first audit, known as the “pre-revamp” audit, reveals the strong points and weaknesses of the current site. It provides recommendations on the content of the redesign. The second audit is carried out after the site has been revamped. The aim of the second audit is to verify whether the new site better reaches its goal, and if the corrections made in the new version do indeed improve the site’s performance. If you too would like to successfully revamp your website, why not discover our Performance audit?
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