4 common mistakes in website development projects
Posted: Sun Dec 22, 2024 6:24 am
What return does your company's website bring to the business? Can you measure the quality of the leads that come through this channel? Which pages or content are most accessed by leads that are negotiating with the sales team?
These issues should be increasingly common in corporate website redesign (or reformulation) projects, but unfortunately the scenario is still quite different.
CTA Website
Even today, it is common to find corporate website redesign email list providers in france with briefings that focus only on changing the layout, design, updating content and adapting it to mobile devices. The image below, taken from a client briefing, exemplifies the problem well:
website_development.png
This symptom makes it clear that your marketing strategy is probably going badly and that your business results will hardly be supported by the digital strategy.
When we talk about website redesign, we are not just referring to changing the layout and design so that the website has a beautiful, modern and updated “look”. More than just working on the image, it is essential to put strategy, user experience and content at the forefront of the process, always thinking about the role of this channel for your target audience and for the business.
To illustrate, we can compare this situation to a home renovation. Painting the walls of the living room and bedroom will certainly bring about a nice change in the environment, but will this alone solve the problems of leaks and infiltrations or even prepare the environment to avoid possible setbacks? If you don't do this, you will probably regret it later.
Planning a new website redesign is no different: before you start messing around with the coding and layout, it’s important to make sure you’re avoiding mistakes along the way .
To make this process more streamlined and assertive, we have listed the four main common mistakes that occur at this stage. Check them out and avoid them.
#1: Not defining a goal or strategy
No strategy
One of the main mistakes when starting a website development project is not defining what the expected return is from the initiative. Without clear and well-defined goals and strategies, the chance of success is reduced. To avoid this, start by setting goals. You can base your goals on SMART goals, which consist of defining specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and predictable objectives.
For example, let’s say your goal is to generate 25% more leads than last quarter. This will affect your portal redesign, as you’ll need to plan how to meet the landing page’s engagement. But if you hadn’t set that goal back then, you wouldn’t know how to prepare your site to meet that need, would you?
#2: Ignoring data analysis tools
website_development_4.png
Planning the development of the website based on numerical expectations, lead attraction and conversion is a step that should be considered in all projects. A fundamental step to achieving this result through the new website is to plan it with the implementation of tools that allow you to analyze the data and, thus, make assertive decisions.
Without considering an Analytics tool on the new website, you will not be able to analyze the effective performance of the portal and the results that are being generated by it.
#3: Updating website content without focusing on personas
website_development_2.png
Even though you may have been concerned about using keywords to index the content during the last website update, you need to review it again.
With changes in design, structure and format, it may make sense, for example, to place more emphasis on illustrations or videos and reduce the amount of text. Or, depending on your business strategy, you may need to rewrite all of your content to reflect the new moment and new goals.
Attention: when we talk about content marketing, we want to emphasize the importance of having a defined persona . This is the starting point for any digital strategy, especially for the website. If your company does not have the correct definition of the ideal buyer profile that it needs to attract to the website, it will be difficult to achieve good results.
These issues should be increasingly common in corporate website redesign (or reformulation) projects, but unfortunately the scenario is still quite different.
CTA Website
Even today, it is common to find corporate website redesign email list providers in france with briefings that focus only on changing the layout, design, updating content and adapting it to mobile devices. The image below, taken from a client briefing, exemplifies the problem well:
website_development.png
This symptom makes it clear that your marketing strategy is probably going badly and that your business results will hardly be supported by the digital strategy.
When we talk about website redesign, we are not just referring to changing the layout and design so that the website has a beautiful, modern and updated “look”. More than just working on the image, it is essential to put strategy, user experience and content at the forefront of the process, always thinking about the role of this channel for your target audience and for the business.
To illustrate, we can compare this situation to a home renovation. Painting the walls of the living room and bedroom will certainly bring about a nice change in the environment, but will this alone solve the problems of leaks and infiltrations or even prepare the environment to avoid possible setbacks? If you don't do this, you will probably regret it later.
Planning a new website redesign is no different: before you start messing around with the coding and layout, it’s important to make sure you’re avoiding mistakes along the way .
To make this process more streamlined and assertive, we have listed the four main common mistakes that occur at this stage. Check them out and avoid them.
#1: Not defining a goal or strategy
No strategy
One of the main mistakes when starting a website development project is not defining what the expected return is from the initiative. Without clear and well-defined goals and strategies, the chance of success is reduced. To avoid this, start by setting goals. You can base your goals on SMART goals, which consist of defining specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and predictable objectives.
For example, let’s say your goal is to generate 25% more leads than last quarter. This will affect your portal redesign, as you’ll need to plan how to meet the landing page’s engagement. But if you hadn’t set that goal back then, you wouldn’t know how to prepare your site to meet that need, would you?
#2: Ignoring data analysis tools
website_development_4.png
Planning the development of the website based on numerical expectations, lead attraction and conversion is a step that should be considered in all projects. A fundamental step to achieving this result through the new website is to plan it with the implementation of tools that allow you to analyze the data and, thus, make assertive decisions.
Without considering an Analytics tool on the new website, you will not be able to analyze the effective performance of the portal and the results that are being generated by it.
#3: Updating website content without focusing on personas
website_development_2.png
Even though you may have been concerned about using keywords to index the content during the last website update, you need to review it again.
With changes in design, structure and format, it may make sense, for example, to place more emphasis on illustrations or videos and reduce the amount of text. Or, depending on your business strategy, you may need to rewrite all of your content to reflect the new moment and new goals.
Attention: when we talk about content marketing, we want to emphasize the importance of having a defined persona . This is the starting point for any digital strategy, especially for the website. If your company does not have the correct definition of the ideal buyer profile that it needs to attract to the website, it will be difficult to achieve good results.