How to properly update the site?

Owners of existing sites often fall into the trap of wanting to upgrade them. We are talking about successful sites with their own history and audience (company websites, online stores, portals). Abrupt and ill-considered update site, can lead to a fatal mistake in the fate of the business.

Often this happens as follows: developers and designers see that the site is outdated, its design and structure do not meet current trends. Developers decide to make a site completely from scratch, because a competent redesign is much harder. As a result, a loyal customer comes to your new site and can not make an order, because there are established habits of man. This is especially common with online stores.

In this post I will tell you what steps are needed to properly rebuild an existing site.

The first stage – Research
The objectives of the site owner and users often do not overlap and in order to keep everyone satisfied, you need to do research. It is important to find out what problems exist, what needs to be added, reworked, completely removed or implemented.

communication with the business and managers. Need to understand what is important for them, and what goals and objectives they want to solve the new site, design.
communication with current customers. The task is to find out their problems with the site. To find out what they like on the site and which sections/pages need to be redesigned or removed.
Analyze the activity on the site. Which pages are the most popular. Which products are the most marketable and marginal. This will help to understand what sections, goods we can place in the beginning of the site, in the middle and at the end, so they bring commercial results.
analysis of the current positions of the site and its features. It is important to understand in advance on what positions in search engines is the site, at the expense of which receives traffic. The task of updating the site is to improve performance.

The second stage – Prototyping.
Based on the data collected from the first phase, we develop a prototype of the future site and structure. When creating a prototype, we need to take into account user behavior. Sometimes moving the “Cart” and “Buy” buttons to new locations, ruins business.

You need to start with key pages and blocks. There are several options for the customer to choose from. Together with the owners of the site should discuss the benefits of each option, and then work with the favorite.

Prototype is important for everyone involved in the project, both the client and the contractor. Prototype gathers all the ideas and thoughts. It reflects the functions, scenarios for using the site.

The third stage – the visual design (UI).
After choosing one of the versions of the prototype, engaged in visual design. Prototype at this stage serves as a “skeleton” on which all the other organs of the body.

Site design is a whole system, where everything is interconnected. And not just an external picture. To develop a really good design, you need to work through the design of all the elements, where all scenarios of the site were thought out.

The fourth stage – development.
When the design is done, the work is transferred to the development department.

If the project is typical, it is best to use ready-made CMS and CRM systems, which are supported and updated.

Programmers need to study the entire skeleton of the current site. Keep all current and well indexed links. Remove or upgrade unnecessary ones. If the site has worked successfully for a long time, it means that work was done on it and you should study their list. You can not just tear everything down.

In programming, you also need to follow a certain system and record every implementation in the company’s library. There should be no surprises that only one programmer knows about the device stuffing of the site, because he can resign. About the stuffing should know all the members of the team, and for this the web-studio should have a library with access to the right team members.

The fifth stage – testing and debugging
After all the programming work is done, the entire functionality of the site should be thoroughly tested. For the customer, the site should be a finished and fully tested product.

The site should be tested from both the management and user sides. It is necessary to reproduce all possible ways of using the site and check its performance. In addition, mandatory testing on different devices and platforms.

The sixth stage – support
Website support is a recommended service for all clients. The ideal support is a monthly “check-up” of the site, checking all the basic functionality, the state of content, updating the system, etc.

Conclusion
Remember that an established site is a large and complex system, the roots of which have sprouted in different resources. You can’t remove an old site and install a new one, it’s a very complex system where any change can have negative consequences for the business. It is important to conduct an in-depth preliminary analysis of the current state of the site and only on the basis of it, make improvements.