Change is all around us, and the driving forces of change seem to have hit the accelerator in the last couple of years. Whether it’s rising customer expectations, continual connectedness, organizational velocity, or the proliferation of data, one thing is very clear. Today, it’s a customer-driven world, and those customers are in the driver’s seat. You’ve got to be able to translate this massive change into opportunity – quickly.
Many of us are in the midst of a transformation, an attempt to keep up and provide the experiences our customers have come to expect. And as part of this need to step up and differentiate ourselves, we look to improve the customer experience by creating a more unified, digital experience. If this includes moving from a legacy website to an enterprise digital experience platform to provide that superior experience, here are a few simple reminders.
Governance and Process
Do yourself a favor, and spend ample time getting governance and process established from the start. As Rick Bauer mentioned in a recent interview with Coveo, it’s critical to determine who your team is, who your stakeholders are and who is responsible for what. Make sure the lines of communication (and responsibilities) are clear to all parties involved.
Scalability
Your new site may very well meet your needs today, but what about tomorrow? Or next year? If you are anticipating a large increase in traffic over the next few years, can your site handle it? Ensure each layer of your website architecture is scalable, including load balancer, web server, and database. Additionally, plan ahead for content growth. Your new site should accommodate scaling up your content as you increase pages in the near future. If possible for your organization and the platform(s) you are considering, look for a cloud solution as a more future-proof option.
Load Time
Long gone are the days of dial-up internet (and busy phone lines that went with it). We are all spoiled by the ubiquity of high-speed, wireless service (and some of us are lucky enough to have fiber). Bottom line – no one has the time, or patience, to sit and wait while your website loads. Desktop, tablet, and mobile… it better be speedy. According to Kissmetrics, 40% of people abandon a site if it takes more than three seconds to load. Common culprits to slow site speed include clunky code and huge images.
Test, Test, Test
Do you know how your visitors interact with your current website? A successful website redesign involves analyzing that data and using your findings to back up decisions made around layouts and navigations, for example. Types of qualitative data reports worth exploring include heatmaps and scrollmaps, user recordings, and poll responses. Learn more about testing in this video.
Site Search
If search is the voice of the customer, don’t let it be an afterthought in your website redesign. After all, site search users are 216% more likely to convert than regular visitors to your site. Seemingly small details, like the location of your search box, suggested queries, and no results displayed on the results page can have a massive impact on your conversion rates and overall customer experience.
Keep in mind, search results are only as good as how well they match your users’ intent. We work with many of our clients to utilize Sitecore Experience Platform and Coveo for Sitecore so that profile and behavioral data can be leveraged to provide personalized search results and to easily personalize all search-driven content. We recently teamed up with Coveo on a comprehensive list of tips to improve site search – get all 17 site search tips here.
