Website redevelopment in Kenya (5 helpful Tips)
Globally the average lifespan of a website is around 3 years.
This is caused by changing technology, change in how visitors consume information and change in internet marketing.
After 3 years progressive businesses will either order for a complete change of their website or improvement of the existing website.
In Kenya, very few businesses regularly review their website.
I know of several companies mostly SMEs who have the same website for around 10 years.
The main reason why businesses don’t update their website is that they don’t find it useful, to them a website is there to show what you do and contact information.
However, today, websites are the main force driving sales in businesses.
A regular review and update of your website is necessary to keep your business competitive and look modern.
If you are looking into redeveloping your website here is what I consider important.
You don’t need money or expertise to use these tips not unless you are busy and opt to hire someone to help you with it.
1. Sitemap
A sitemap is a directory of your website. It contains a list of links to the pages and media files as published on your website.
A sitemap is useful to the search engines. This is the file they use to index your website and content.
Before starting on website redevelopment, it’s highly recommended you create a copy of the current sitemap and maintain the same links structure on the new website.
If there are any changes to the links you should add a redirection from the old link to the new link.
Changing links without a proper redirection to the new links will lead to missing links.
All missing links are identified by the search engines. If they are not fixed, the search engine will lower your ranking in the search results.
2. Why web redevelopment?
For quality work, website development is fairly expensive.
Therefore you need to justify why a new website.
Sit down with your marketing team to establish why redeveloping the current website is necessary.
The ‘whys’ will help you create goals for the new website, which will guide the developer in building a website optimized to the identified goals.
In addition, the goals will help in assessing the performance of the new website.
3. Backup the old website
Before starting the journey of redeveloping your website, you MUST create a backup of the current website and store it securely.
This will be your plan B for any eventualities during development.
A backup will help you to easily revert to using the old website in case there is a delay in development or sabotage.
4. Audit the current website
As you plan to have the website redeveloped it’s important you take an audit of the existing website.
This audit helps you identify elements in the current website that performs best or poorly.
If you find a feature on the website that has been working for your business, you should advise the developer to maintain it on the new website.
5. Get feedback from users
The main reason you want to redevelop your website is to align visitor’s expectations and needs to your website goals.
This alignment will increase the chances of the website meeting its goals.
User feedback will help;
- Identify the challenges they face while using the website,
- Identify what they look for on your website,
- Suggest on how to improve the website or
- Point out some of the things they like/dislike about your website.
This feedback will guide you in creating your website specifications for the developers and designers.
You can collect user feedback via email or a questionnaire on the website.
Outlined is what I consider important when thinking about website redevelopment.
I offer website redevelopment and I will be happy to partner with you in taking your current website to the next level.
I am a trained information scientist, a creative and marketing consultant. I work with business owners on their sales and marketing efforts.
