Rebrand or Website Redesign? How to Choose the Right Refresh for Your Brand

Are your conversion rates dwindling? Is your logo outdated? SEO subpar?

A website refresh or rebranding can reinvigorate a company and breathe new life into its marketing, messaging and overall business platform. So how do you know which tactic is a better fit for your business and marketing goals?

It can be hard to tell. A website redesign may be the best fit if other parts of your business are performing well, but the site itself is stuck in 2000s era design or has a poor UI. A rebrand, on the other hand, is a much broader initiative and extends across all legs of an organization, including marketing, product, sales and HR.

Looking to determine which is best for your business? Keep reading to find out how you can best evaluate your company’s needs for a refresh:

1. Assess the site for basics

You’ll first need to evaluate your site, keeping the foundational components of good web design in mind. Well-designed websites are quick to load, intuitive to navigate and easy to consume. If your site doesn’t deliver information with speed and ease, there’s no reason for potential clients to stay on a page they struggle to understand.

Next, know that a strong website is built with a specific audience in mind, as different users have different needs. Each page of your site should be designed, written and built to satisfy the needs of a predefined target audience, whether they’re an investor, prospect or recruit. To ensure prospects can find your site, be sure to optimize it for Google. No matter how incredible your website is, none of that matters if users are unable to discover it through a search engine. Drive traffic by ensuring your design is optimized for mobile, as well, and includes page titles, keywords, meta tags and a sitemap.

2. Look for key signifiers

Now that you’ve assessed your interface for the basics of good web design, it’s time to evaluate the design and user experience.

Brand: At first glance, strength of brand can be measured by how consistently color, type and other graphic devices are applied. For example, should the brand’s logo be removed from every page? Are color, type and imagery applied consistently and expertly enough to still show what site a user is navigating?

Experience: To measure a site’s experience, it’s often easiest to work with the client to develop a task list and see how long it takes for a user to complete a given mission on the site. For example, a task might be “I’m looking for ‘page x.’ Can I find it without returning to Google?” or “What does this company sell?”. Completing these tasks then allows you to compare how long the task should take (ideally just a few seconds) versus how long it actually takes.

3. Determine which path works best for you

As you saw from the steps above, it’s often best to pursue a website redesign if your site is no longer satisfying its objectives. It needs to communicate the identity of the organization, convert leads and engage users. However, if the site is just one issue among many, and other factors of the business are underperforming as a whole, it may be time to pursue a complete rebranding of the company’s identity to include new and improved messaging, visuals and brand persona.

4. Getting started on your redesign or rebrand

Now that you’ve determined which path works best for you, it’s time to get started with proposing new designs and ensuring buy-in. Make sure you know what’s expected of your design. Establish your target audience and identify their specific needs that you’ll want to communicate online. After these are set in place, you can move forward with making changes to your brand or website. Depending on your resources, you will likely want to work with an experienced designer or agency on this process.

Website redesigns and rebrandings are (clearly) a ton of work, but they’re necessary components of a business. All these features come together to make companies discoverable online and attractive to prospective clients, which ultimately results in increased conversion rates.

To learn more about getting started with your website redesign or company rebranding, get in touch with our team here. We look forward to helping you create a new, refreshed look for your brand.