The Website Redesign Checklist

1. © 2013 htmlcut.com How to Improve Your Website A Checklist to Answer Before You Start Redesigning

2. How to Improve Your Website A Checklist to Answer Before You Start Redesigning © 2013 htmlcut.com The website life cycle includes a lot of phases: Design, PSD to HTML/CSS conversion, back-end development, testing, beta stage, official launch, regular operation, gathering of feedbacks and comments, analysis of website and marketing statistics, improvements and updates, and so forth. Of these one of the most important actions are the 'improvements and updates'.

3. How to Improve Your Website A Checklist to Answer Before You Start Redesigning © 2013 htmlcut.com Below you'll find a checklist for - those who have decided to optimize their website and - those who are developing the website from scratch and want to know things that may be essential for the further site improvement. There are 9 chapters and 80+ questions. We assume that the reader knows in general what is behind the question and uses this questionnaire as a cheat sheet.

4. How to Improve Your Website A Checklist to Answer Before You Start Redesigning © 2013 htmlcut.com Design • Is your website design on modern lines or it looks like a relic of the early days of the web? • Is the design professional? These points are especially crucial for business sites for which design is subconsciously projected onto the service or product quality: obsolete and/or amateur design ==> bad service / product quality. • Is the design effective? Does the design help to convey the main ideas behind your website and to achieve its goals?

5. How to Improve Your Website A Checklist to Answer Before You Start Redesigning © 2013 htmlcut.com Design • Is there synergy between your design and content? Does the design support content or they live unrelated 'lives'? • Is the design pertinent? Is it too bright / dark or contrast or with bizarre fonts unsuitable for your industry and target audience? Maybe the design is associated with undesired or wrong topics, characters or events? • Does your website make a good impression? Is it memorable (in a positive sense) or you use a hackneyed theme with stock images which are published 3 million times on other websites?

6. How to Improve Your Website A Checklist to Answer Before You Start Redesigning © 2013 htmlcut.com Design • Is there a feeling of the website / brand personality? Is there a human voice in your design? • Is your website emotive? Can full-screen / large images or video backgrounds help to make the website more exciting? • Is the design skeuomorphic? Possibly flat design will be more suitable?

7. How to Improve Your Website A Checklist to Answer Before You Start Redesigning © 2013 htmlcut.com Usability and User Experience • If the visitor scans your website, can he or she understand what is your website about and which information / options are available on the website? • Is there a visual guideline how to use the website? Is the website navigation intuitive and consistent? • Is placement of the website elements and their functioning understandable and similar on different pages or they require the visitor to think or guess?

8. How to Improve Your Website A Checklist to Answer Before You Start Redesigning © 2013 htmlcut.com Usability and User Experience • Is the website stuffed with cluttered, redundant or even irrelevant information, images or Call-to-Action buttons which confuse visitors? Or every piece of information is to the point, in the right place and for the right reason? • Is it easy to read the content? Is contrast between fore- and background colors acceptable? Are the type face, font size, line height, margins and white space reasonable? These are important in case there are large pieces of textual information on your website or the target audience is people who may have weak eyesight.

9. How to Improve Your Website A Checklist to Answer Before You Start Redesigning © 2013 htmlcut.com Usability and User Experience • Is your content properly formatted and easy-to-scan (paragraphs of 4-6 lines, sufficient number of sub-headers, lists, and quotes)? • Are there appropriate images and illustrations which make visual breaks or only a solid flow of text, text and text? • Is there an overwhelming or annoying use of bold and italic? Is there a lot of center justified text?

10. How to Improve Your Website A Checklist to Answer Before You Start Redesigning © 2013 htmlcut.com Usability and User Experience • Is the content correct from the point of view of spelling and grammar? • Do you use unsolicited pop-ups or irritating banners? • Are there audio or video files which are loaded automatically and the visitor cannot stop or mute them? • If there are widgets or features, are they easy-to-use and useful for the website visitors?

11. How to Improve Your Website A Checklist to Answer Before You Start Redesigning © 2013 htmlcut.com Marketing • Is your website for humans or search engines? • Is the website developed for the right people? Is the design and content engaging and understandable for the target audience? • Is the website design and content about you and your company or about customers' needs and problem solving? • Is it easy to find out what your services or products are about and why your company is the best choice?

12. How to Improve Your Website A Checklist to Answer Before You Start Redesigning © 2013 htmlcut.com Marketing • Is the website copy effective? Headlines and slogans - Are they just a bunch of words to fill the white space or every word and its position is well thought-out? • Are your contacts visible well on the website? Are they present on each page or only on the Contact page? • Is there clear Call-to-Action? Is Call-to-Action overdone, confusing or too blatant?

13. How to Improve Your Website A Checklist to Answer Before You Start Redesigning © 2013 htmlcut.com Marketing • Are the Call-to-Action buttons / links effective? For example, their shape, size, color, wording, and position can increase the website conversion rate in several times. • Are forms (for example, on 'Contact us' or 'Order' pages) easy to deal with? Do they contain a reasonable number (as few as possible) of fields with clear meanings? • Is there the Help or FAQ section? What about consumer guides, free reports or reviews?

14. How to Improve Your Website A Checklist to Answer Before You Start Redesigning © 2013 htmlcut.com Marketing • Does the website provide visitors with appropriate response after important operations? • Are there testimonials? Are they true words from real people or canned ones? • Is your website trustworthy? Are there elements that build trust and credibility? • How often do you add new content? Is it stale? If so, what is the reason - maybe it is technically difficult or inconvenient to do that?

15. How to Improve Your Website A Checklist to Answer Before You Start Redesigning © 2013 htmlcut.com Marketing • Does the website provide necessary legal information and guarantees? (it is especially important for e-commerce, SaaS, and so on) • Do you use one large website for all your businesses / services / products or there are a central (corporate) website plus a number of specialized websites for the most important services or products which are easily found and accessed by consumers?

16. How to Improve Your Website A Checklist to Answer Before You Start Redesigning © 2013 htmlcut.com PSD to HTML conversion & coding • Which versions of HTML and CSS are used on your website? What about HTML5 and CSS3? Possibly they are more efficient and reasonable for your website now. • Is the website HTML / CSS / JavaScript code errorless? Does your website look and function correctly? • Is your website W3C standards valid? (you can check that on the W3C sites validator.w3.org and jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/)

17. How to Improve Your Website A Checklist to Answer Before You Start Redesigning © 2013 htmlcut.com PSD to HTML conversion & coding • Is the website table-based? • Is the HTML / CSS code understandable and easy to update and modify? Is it clean, structured and commented or there are a lot of code garbage and remains of coding experiments and failed improvements? • Does your website look and work identically in different popular web browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, IE)?

18. How to Improve Your Website A Checklist to Answer Before You Start Redesigning © 2013 htmlcut.com PSD to HTML conversion & coding • Is the website code SEO semantic? • What about accessibility? • Is the loading time of your website small?

19. How to Improve Your Website A Checklist to Answer Before You Start Redesigning © 2013 htmlcut.com SEO • Are page URLs SEO-friendly? • Are 'title' and meta 'description' tags appropriate and different for every page? • Are there a reasonable number of relevant and right keywords and their synonyms in the content? • Do images have relevant 'alt' attributes? Are image names descriptive or look like 'img12345.png'?

20. How to Improve Your Website A Checklist to Answer Before You Start Redesigning © 2013 htmlcut.com SEO • Do you or your SEO company use black SEO tricks? • Is the website overoptimized (for example, too many keywords)? • Are the website pages adequately interlinked? • Does the website have sitemaps (both an HTML version and XML one)? Are they fresh? • Is there a lot of Flash or Javascript on the website? Are they necessary and optimized or used on the principle of 'why not'?

21. How to Improve Your Website A Checklist to Answer Before You Start Redesigning © 2013 htmlcut.com SEO • Is there a large number of images? Is it possible to substitute them or their textual elements for web-fonts? (web-fonts are much more SEO friendly) If not, maybe a rollover 'image' - 'textual description' or other HTML/CSS/JS techniques which display text on clicking or mouse hover are the solution? • Are there broken links on your website? What about 'orphan' pages? • Is there duplicate content? How do you solve the pagination problems?

22. How to Improve Your Website A Checklist to Answer Before You Start Redesigning © 2013 htmlcut.com SEO • Is your content unique and of high quality or a spinned, stolen or worthless garbage? • Are there backlinks to your website from low quality resources? How many backlinks are there with your main exact keywords as an anchor text? • Is there authorship information on your website? • Do you use social snippets on your website? What about schema.org microdata?

23. How to Improve Your Website A Checklist to Answer Before You Start Redesigning © 2013 htmlcut.com Functionality and Features • Does your website have sufficient functionality - search, slideshows, catalogs, online calculators or document generators, just to name a few? Is it competitive enough in comparison with websites of your rivals? • Is your website interactive? Are there contact or feedback forms on your website? What about online chat? • Do you use Google / Bing maps on your website? • Are there videos? Photo galleries?

24. How to Improve Your Website A Checklist to Answer Before You Start Redesigning © 2013 htmlcut.com Sociability • Do you have active accounts in the social networks? Do they have a decent (for websites in your niche) number of fans? • Is the website linked to your active accounts on Facebook or Twitter? • Is it easy to 'Like' or Retweet your content or Pin images? • Is it possible to subscribe to your e-mail newsletter(s), RSS feed(s) or follow you on Facebook, Twitter or Google+? • Is there a blog on your website? Is it alive?

25. How to Improve Your Website A Checklist to Answer Before You Start Redesigning © 2013 htmlcut.com Mobility • How well is your website displayed on mobile devices and tablets? For example, is it convenient to browse and use it on iPhone or iPad? • Is the layout of your website responsive? • How do images on your website look on the Retina displays? • Does your website support such mobile functionality as touch screen operations or geographic location awareness?

26. How to Improve Your Website A Checklist to Answer Before You Start Redesigning © 2013 htmlcut.com Mobility • Is there Flash animation? (it doesn't work on iPhones or iPads) • Are the design elements large enough to be easy-to-use on touch screens? • Do you use mouse-overs (rollovers)? (they need a special treatment on touch screen devices)

27. How to Improve Your Website A Checklist to Answer Before You Start Redesigning © 2013 htmlcut.com Updates and Maintenance • Is it easy to update content, for example, to add a new page or image, change a phrase or modify a page title? Can you do this job without assistance or you need to ask IT staff? • Is your website scalable? For instance, can it cope with suddenly increased traffic? • Is your website safe and reliable? • Can the website be localized for the different markets?

28. How to Improve Your Website A Checklist to Answer Before You Start Redesigning © 2013 htmlcut.com Updates and Maintenance • Does your CMS (content management system) correctly support new versions of necessary plug-ins or there are problems with their compatibility? • Is it easy to make a backup version of the website?

29. How to Improve Your Website A Checklist to Answer Before You Start Redesigning © 2013 htmlcut.com Summary The website improvement is a task that should be done almost on a daily basis, because the web and competitive market environment are changing continuously. By keeping your website up to date you are constantly improving your business effectiveness and customers' satisfaction. This is a long way but it leads to success. Read more on our blog www.htmlcut.com/blog

30. © 2013 htmlcut.com HTMLcut.com is a leading PSD to HTML / HTML5 / CSS and PSD to WordPress / Joomla! / Drupal conversion company. For more information: info@htmlcut.com www.htmlcut.com htmlcut.com/blog