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1. How To Guide
Preparing for a Website Redesign
Executive Summary:
This report has been designed to provide practical advice for preparing
for a website redesign project.
Read this brief 7-page 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.
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2. 2
Table of Contents Page
Conduct a Website Effectiveness Audit 3
Gain Approval for Website Redesign 3
Define Website Requirements 4
Build a Website Program Action Plan 4
Develop your New Website 5
Drive Traffic to your Website 6
Proactively Maintain your Website 7
Conclusion 7
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3. 3
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.
Step 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.
Step 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.
Step 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 Website Audit Report Tool.
Gain Approval for Website Redesign
Step 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.
Step 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.
Step 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.
Step 4 - Achieve Approval for Website Program: use your
Business Case to sell this idea internally to senior management.
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4. 4
Define Website Requirements
Step 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.
Step 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.
Step 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.
Step 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.
Step 5 - Perform a Web Program GAP Analysis: use our GAP
Analysis Tool to evaluate your functional & infrastructure
requirements. Determine the feasibility of closing each gap and make
adjustments to your requirements document accordingly.
Step 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.
Build a Website Program Action Plan
Use Demand Metric‟s Website Program Action Plan Tool to pull
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 executives who now need to get
involved.
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5. 5
Develop your New Website
If you haven‟t done so already, read our Evaluating Website
Effectiveness Report to understand what makes a solid website.
Step 1 - Define your Target Audience(s) & Purpose: most websites
cater to prospective customers, existing customers, potential
employees, investors, media, partners, & community. Think about the
objectives of each audience to create pages and sections that deliver
valuable content based on each perspective.
Step 2 - Organize Content & Structure: work to build a hierarchy of
pages (which will become 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 it very easy to navigate to any section or sub-
section off the website. Many organizations like to create a URL/favorites
icon to reinforce their brand or logo. Go to www.favicon.com/ to learn
more.
Step 3 - Establish Privacy Policy and Terms of Use: protect your
organization from potential litigation resulting from website usage. Use
our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use templates to save time with
getting these documents over to legal for approval. If you have a Blog
on your website, you may need a Blog Policy.
Step 4 - Integrate Analytics and Web Reporting: if you aren‟t using
analytics, read Free Web Analytics from Google.
Step 5 - Handoff to Technical Staff for Development: now that you
have your functional requirements completed, and have organized the
content and structure of the website, handoff the delivery component of
the project to your technical web team.
Step 6 - Build, Test, & Launch Website: work closely with the
development team to ensure that the website that is built accurately
reflects the web requirements document. Conduct external penetration
testing or „white-hat hacking‟ to ensure your website is secure and will
not allow unauthorized access. Test each page and document to ensure
that the 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 their interest). If everything
works, launch your new website with some internal/external promotions.
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6. 6
Drive Traffic to your Website
Step 1 - Develop an External Linking Strategy: search engines like
Google and Yahoo make assumptions 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 partners, 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.
Step 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”.
Step 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.
Step 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.
Step 5 - Integrate Website with Other Channels: consider using
your new website for lead generation (website demo), post press
releases, promote events and speaking engagements, add a newsletter
to build up your email marketing database, etc.
Step 6 - Consider Adding a Customer-Facing Blog: many
organizations are using blogs to informally communicate with
customers, and to gather company & product feedback. Read
Successful Blogs Increase Customer Satisfaction for more advice.
Use our Blog Policy template if you plan to use this new medium.
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7. 7
Proactively Maintain your Website
Step 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.
Step 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.
Step 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.
Conclusion
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.
www.demandmetric.com Call a Principal Analyst:
(866) 947-7744