If you want to find information about a company, what do you do? We’re willing to bet that your first instinct is to open your browser and take a peek at its website. Our tendency to look to the internet for information makes sound web design indispensable.
Creating an aesthetically pleasing and easily navigable website not only attracts viewers and prospective customers, it is also an important factor in establishing a company’s credibility. In fact, according to a study by Stanford University, up to 75 percent of users make a snap judgment about a company’s credibility based on a quick perusal of its website.
With these thoughts in mind, we began our own journey to re-invigorate the Springboard website in order to better help our prospective and current clients as well as to showcase the work of our hardworking team.
If you are thinking about redesigning your website or are in the process of a redesign, read on for some advice and insights based on our endeavor to redesign the Springboard website.
Do you need to redesign your website?
Redesigning your website is not an easy or quick task, but rather a process to be taken very seriously. However, if your current website doesn’t make the cut, you could be doing your clients and your company a disservice. How do you know when it’s time for a redesign?
If you and your team are thinking about redesigning your company website, consider the following:
- Does your website content still reflect what your business does?
- Is your website responsive?
- Is your website mobile-friendly?
- Is your website easy to navigate?
- Have you changed your brand identity or logo?
- Did your audience change? Do you need to attract a new audience?
- Does the platform you’re currently using meet your needs?
How do you go about redesigning your website?
Based on the above considerations, you may have decided that it’s time for a website refresh. What’s next? We found that the below process helped to organize and focus our own website redesign.
1. Create a list of pros and cons – Before you reach out to a designer, take the time to figure out what you like about your current website and what you would like to change. This will give you an opportunity to create a clear vision before you move forward and help you avoid potential chaos down the line.
2. Identify Personas – Pinpointing who are you targeting will determine the layout, copy and types of content you need to include to engage those audiences.
3. Find inspiration – Do you admire any websites that you’ve seen or that you visit frequently? Try to narrow down exactly what it is about those websites that you like and decide if and how you could incorporate some of those elements into your own website.
4. Create a “web map” – At this step, you need to figure out exactly how your website will be structured. For instance, how many pages will your website have? How will users navigate from the home page to internal pages? Drawing out a rough flow chart with paper and pencil can be useful in helping you visualize the content of your website and how it will be presented.
5. Create rough wireframes – Work with a web designer/developer to help you create simple, colorless wireframe mockups of each page. This will help you to test the placement of specific components within your web pages, such as hero images, copy and buttons.
6. Create detailed wireframes – Once the structure is locked down, work with your web designer/developer to incorporate colors, images, textures and icons into the wireframe mockups to create fully-designed flat files of your website pages.
7. Code it – When you are completely satisfied with your wireframes, it’s time to hand these files over the web designer/developer so that they can be translated into code on your hosting platform of choice.
8. Test it out – Before you even think about making your website live, make sure to test its functionality in multiple browsers and screen formats, including mobile and tablets. Does everything work as you thought it would? Is your copy correct? Now is the time to work with your web designer/developer to make edits.
9. Launch time – Time to show off all of your hard work!
Reflecting on the Springboard website
Redesigning the Springboard website has been a long but worthwhile process. While we are proud of our website as a whole, there are several aspects of the redesigned website that we wish to highlight:
New home page – A home page is like the front of your home; it needs to be inviting to draw in visitors. We feel that our new home page reflects that idea and encourages visitors to enter for a better look.
Clean layout – The new Springboard website features a significantly more streamlined look. We greatly reduced copy in favor of a more visual, aesthetically-pleasing layout that leverages white space to create a more open feel.
Full-width layout – Perhaps one of our top criticisms of our old website was its lack of usable space; each page had colored side bars, which made the page feel cluttered and disjointed. The new Springboard website features a full-width layout that increases readability and allows us to create more visually-appealing content.
Streamlined navigation – By reducing the amount of internal pages within our website and making our navigation bar more straightforward, we made it simple for visitors to find the information they need quickly.
Refreshed company page – In condensing our company information into one page and including the faces responsible for the Springboard magic, we feel that the refreshed company page better reflects our values.
Work showcase – We felt that it was important to better showcase the great work that we do for our clients. With that in mind, we worked hard to create a work page and client case studies that we can feel comfortable showing prospective and current clients.
We hope you are inspired by our website redesign journey as you embark on your own.
If you are looking to redesign your website, we are here to help.
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