💻 Every few years, companies will feel the itch to refresh their website’s design. This may be done because of a drop on website performance metrics, or simply because someone in that company felt bored; but before embarking on finding inspiration for a new web designer, consider the fact that changing your website’s design may impact customer trust: after seeing your website, they may be surprised if your other advertisements, store signage, business cards, apps, etc. look and feel different.
Potential customers may feel they’re being scammed; trustworthy companies appear orderly, and their overall design language should rhyme and be systematic. We should ensure that the design language is maintained among our marketing collaterals, and a website re-design should be part of a wider digital design system initiative.
Typically, you (the client) will:
- Seek vendors by searching for them online, or
- Open the job for tendering by interested parties.
Vendors will usually submit a pitch document to you; as a Presentation, a Document, or an interactive mockup.
Next, you’ll have to evaluate which web design vendors to choose. Aside from evaluating vendors with proven performance by automatically scoring the best-foot-forward work in their portfolio, you’ll want to evaluate their pitch deck.
- Do they have a portfolio of previous web design clients? (We can evaluate real-world performance scores for websites they’ve designed.)
- What CMS (Content Management System) do they recommend? (This is the most pressing issue with revamping the website.)
- What comprises their recommended technology stack? (This affects website performance, as judged by Google.)
- Do they have a proposed Information Architecture (Sitemap) for the new website? (This would inform the overall UX, not just pretty graphics.)
- Do they have proven use cases for accessibility? (Malaysian bandwidth concern, and language models.)
- Do they provide web design-as-a-service (maintenance support)? Or is this a one-off web design-per-se (template)?
- Don’t judge by how popular each vendor’s social media is.
Recommended Web Re-Design
Evaluation Guidelines
UI
Applied Design
- Does the overall web design / graphic design / typography / photography / interface conform to the corporate branding documentation?
- Does the overall … apply corporate branding in a creative way?
- Can the … design language be applied onto other digital / analogue assets?
- Does the overall … give the appropriate impression for the website’s purpose? Is this a customer-facing website (B2C or B2B) or merely corporate branding?
- Does the overall … follow a trend?
Does it meet evergreen web design standards?
Accessibility
- What are the most common audience segments that may visit the website, by demographics & psychographics?
- Does the overall web design indicate how they’ll approach all forms of interaction? Keyboard only, mouse primary, touch screen, (and web crawlers for SEO?)
- Does the overall web design indicate how they’ll approach all scales of display? Smartphone, tablet, laptop, desktop, etc. Will they be Responsive, or otherwise?
- Based on the above, are the aesthetics of the overall web design applied to be legible to each audience segment?
- Does the graphic design and typography offer sufficient contrast for legibility? E.g. Use of web fonts vs. bespoke, graphic-only fonts, affects load times, SEO, etc.
- Does the graphic design and photography distract from the communication? E.g. Human photography vs. illustration, or graphic elements.
- Does the graphic design and interface provide sufficient context for navigation? E.g. CTA buttons.
UX
IA
- How will the future website differ (or maintain) the structure of information across all web pages / sections? (This is not the interface; it may be a Sitemap, or Table of Contents.)
- For each department in the company, which part of the website corresponds to their function in relation to the website visitor? E.g. Product sales web pages for the Sales dept., Store directory web page for the Operations dept., Contact web page for the Customer Service dept., Blog for the Public Relations dept., etc.
Key Messaging
- Depends on the short-term and long-term communications needs, and website owning entity’s intent for being online. Examples…
- Will the customer be able to catch what the latest marketing campaign is, and will how it’s presented be enough to drive them as footfall?
- Will a visitor to the corporate website be confident in the company’s performance (at a glance, or in-depth) and want to invest in the company?