We all know how daunting the task of overhauling your website can be, and if you don’t, well we’re not going to lie, it is a task-and-a-half no matter whether it is 10 pages or 1,000 pages.
So, be prepared. In this series of posts, we are going to cover the processes and best practices of a website overhaul using the HEEDGROUP way. And, here at HEEDGROUP we use a series of tools that we have built from our years of working with various clients on building their digital brand presences that we will share with you along the way. We’ll also talk about the tools we use to project manage a huge task like this.
This is just the beginning though and as you start to think through how to handle such a behemoth task, let’s just take a 30,000 foot view of the entire process first. Believe or not, you can carve out a website overhaul project into 6 discrete phases:
Phase 1: Scoping
The scoping phase is super important to guarantee the success of the project. Scoping is exactly what it sounds like. Define the goals and actions of the website from a business perspective.
Phase 2: Pre-Migration Work
If you have an existing website, then your website has a history on the Internet, this pre-migration phase is extremely important to make sure all your years of existence on the web are not lost with your new site. This is also the phase to start planning for SEO and content migration (your old content to your new site). Get this phase right and you will be a star in your organization.
Phase 3: Pre-Launch Audit & Measurements
Because your website is a pile of code and basically as Marketers we try to measure everything. This phase guarantees that you are ready to measure your old site against benchmarks from your old site. A lot of times, the skeletons are truly revealed during this phase of a website overhaul project.
Phase 4 - Development
This is what it is… this phase is where the website is literally designed and developed. Done!
Phase 5 - Launch
Once again, nothing shocking here. Except that I would put money on a bet that you would not believe the amount of steps it takes to make sure that your launch goes smoothly especially for the larger sites that have multiple systems involved. The key to this phase is Test, Test, and Test again.
Phase 6: Performance Review
At this phase, you have a new site up and running. WOOT! This is where you will want to gather measurements of the new site and compare them to the old site. Trust me, if you are in an organization where you just migrated, redesigned (aka, overhauled) your very large website and spent a lot of money on the process, this phase is necessary. It’s even necessary for the smaller sites too as it guarantees that you are hitting the newly set goals for the website in your scoping phase.
In our next Blog, we will get into the steps of each of these phases and give you a checklist to use for your website project.