Complete website redesign - what to look for
-
We are having our website redesigned by an SEO company to increase CTR and for a better user experience and I was wondering what to look for and what key questions to ask. At the moment we rank very well for a few strong keywords and I m afraid that by rewriting the content and changing the website layout we might put at risk some of the rankings even for a brief period of time. This company seems to be very good so I need to know what to ask them to make sure everything goes according to plan.
Your thoughts are appreciated.
-
Are they doing some of the things we mention in our 4 D process? If not, ask them why.
-
Echo,
"You hope to increase CTR." Is this if the search engines? If so you need to change your meta descriptions and meta titles, this might be able to be done without creating a completely new website.
As for a few questions here you go:
- What's their experience building websites?
- What does the website look like on mobile platforms(Is it responsive)?
- What will be the tree structure of the website?
- How easily can I change/edit content and meta information?
- Will the images be optimized(*something often overlooked)?
- Has their been a sitemap created?
Those are a few questions that come to mind right off the bat.
-
Ask them for case studies or successes they have in similar situations. I would ask if the can give you print outs of some of their organic improvements straight form google analytics.
If you are redoing the whole website for better ctr, that makes no sense. your CTR from organic traffic will mostly be determined by your meta descriptions and how well they are written. Remember any words in your meta desc will show bolded when they show up in the serps.
Also your ranking position will have a lot to do with you ctr.
As far as user experience yes a redesign may benefit you conversion rate or your average order value. The only possible way a new web design could improve click through rate is if many of your users are using google preview to see your site before clicking and even then it would have to be pretty bad to deter them from clicking based on a small preview.
Are you sure they are not trying to increase relevance for +click through rates for ppc?
Overall I understand why you are wary. You site seems pretty fine to me and if your already ranking the only thing they should be changing is meta descriptions for a better click through rate, or at least that's the best starting point.
And redesigning the whole website you can best believe their is a possibility of losing some rankings temporarily or even long term. You may also improve but I would really just ask them to start with the meta descriptions which should be written as keyword focused ad-copy.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Site Redesign Leads Dropped
One of my clients recently had his site redesigned. He wanted to change the design completely, I did offer advice on aspects relating to the redesign, I think its fair to say that he didn't follow all of my advice. PPC still running as usual and rankings still OK but the leads have gone down. Most of the leads come via the phone. I have suggested a number of ways to establish what has gone wrong including surveying his existing customers, comparing old and new designs etc...The client isn't keen on these methods. I'm hoping someone has some direct experience and can offer some direction as to how best to proceed? Justin
Conversion Rate Optimization | | GrouchyKids0 -
User Testing a Website
Hello We're soon going to be embarking on a fairly major site overhaul and while this isn't a particularly SEO related question, I’m keen to integrate user feedback quite heavily in this process and would appreciate your opinion as how best to collect this feedback. These are the kind of questions that I would like to pose: Is it clear when you visit the site, what it is that they do? What is your first thought about the site when you visit it? On the homepage, where is your eye drawn to immediately? When wishing to purchase a product, would this product page draw you into the sale? Do you get a general feeling of trustworthiness on the site? Using the series of drop downs on the homepage, please choose any product and follow the process through to the checkout. Did you feel that this was engaging throughout? Rather than yes/no answers I’d like the user to spend a good 5-10 minutes giving their detailed opinions so that we can gain some genuine inspiration on how best to improve the site. What would be the best method of collecting this data? I was thinking perhaps Amazon Mechanical Turk but the thrust of the work offered there seems to be so diverse that I’m not sure we’d get people in tune with offering the kind of detailed answers that I’d be hoping for. Thanks for your help.
Conversion Rate Optimization | | ChrisHolgate0 -
Conversion Rate boost - Website Feedback
We are a relatively young company with an Okay conversion rate of around 2% across several different sales channels. I am mentioning this because our website with the same type of products has a very low conversion rate of under 1%. I know this is a deep topic, involving different analytic metrics, but would like to ask MOZ community members if there's anything obvious that needs improvement on this website www.cherrywalls.com that would help to increase conversions. I will be happy to answer any additional questions or to clarify things! Thank you for your time! Any suggestions and/or critique are greatly appreciated!
Conversion Rate Optimization | | CherryW1 -
Your advice on Website Optimization Tools for A/B and Multivariant tests
Hi everyone, I've been looking for tools to support all the A/B and Multivatriant testing for my websites. I've seen a lot of stuff out there but I'd like to hear what YOU think. Are you using any of these tools?
Conversion Rate Optimization | | mozzello
Which one would you recommend? Thanks a lot for your help
Michel0 -
5 star review for website
I have been considering adding a 5 star review capability to my website. Are there any good ones that I can add with either html or javascript? I do not have a wordpress site. Any experience with increased conversion rates with such a capability? Also, do any have the capability to show up in google search results?
Conversion Rate Optimization | | casper4340 -
Advice on SEO for Chinese Website in China
Hey folks, I am a little out of my depth here because I have never SEO'd a website that is not in English - and especially in China. I have a few questions that I hope someone can help with? What are the primary SE's in China Are there any specifics with regards Keyword Research Are there any specifics around SEO techniques and climbing up the SERPs? I know I don't speak Chinese but I will need to be advising. Thanks, Andy
Conversion Rate Optimization | | Andy.Drinkwater0 -
Canonical to another website?
I've recently noticed in my adwords campaigns that using exact match domains improves my quality scores so I've been snatching up all kinds of domains which include different keywords. On these new sites (which I only use to bring down my CPC) I've been tossing up a landing page, scraping some content form my main site and direct a canonical tag to my organic site so google doesnt penalize me for duplcant content. It is ok to use a canonicle to an outside website and Is there any precautions when doing this? I just want to be sure I'm not hurting my main site where we rank well organicly on and I was also wondering if any of these sub sites which also have links to my main site carry any vaue. Appreciate any feedback! -Cliff
Conversion Rate Optimization | | CliffAuerswald0 -
For the hotel website, should i make homepage banner/slideshow in flash or javascript
Hello Sir, We have build hotel website and enabled google analytics on that. When we were going through the report of google analytics it shows that 69% have java and other 31% visitor has no java. We have designed Slideshow/banner on home page which shows different pictures of hotel which is in javascript. My question is as per google analytics report 31% have no java, that means they are not able to see that slideshow/banner of hotel pictures? is this the reason for 23% bounce rate on our website? Please help on this because I have spend nights on seo and tried lot of goal conversion techniques with different landing pages. I will heartily appreciate you response. Thanks, Bandro.
Conversion Rate Optimization | | Bandro0