There are many different timings for renewing a company’s
website
. Your goal may be to achieve new results by updating information, functions, and design. In order to ensure that you achieve your goals and produce results, there are some things you should be aware of.
This time, we will introduce what you should do and what you should be careful about when carrying out a homepage renewal.
Clarifying the purpose of homepage renewal is important
If there is a request from within your company to renew your company homepage, there may be various reasons.
- I want to update the design and content
- I want to add functions such as payment function and posting reservation function.
- Want to reduce the effort and time it takes to update your site?
- Conversion rate is low, such as not receiving inquiries or sales not increasing as expected.
- A competitor has renewed their homepage.
- I want to strengthen my branding
Such a request must have arisen from some kind of issue. However, when renewing a corporate website, it is essential to dig deeper into this vague purpose and clarify the goal in order to achieve results.
To that end, the first thing you need to do is analyze the current situation and formulate renewal goals.
Current status analysis and renewal goal setting procedure
Therefore, we will introduce how to analyze the current situation and the steps to formulate goals for homepage renewal.
1. Clarify current issues through company site analysis
Analyze your company’s website and identify current issues.
- Utilize Google Analytics If you are using an access analysis tool such as Google Analytics, check and analyze the number of visits to your site and user trends and attributes in detail. We understand user usage trends by looking at what content is popular and where the most traffic comes from. Then, check to what extent your website is connected to the inquiries and purchases you want to get.
If you are not getting the results you expected, find out where the problem is.
- Find improvements to your homepage using Google Search Console
Google Search Console, which Google provides to homepage operators, is effective for finding issues with your own site. You can learn about HTML markup, URL canonicalization, mobile friendliness, incoming keywords from search engines, index status on Google, internal links and backlinks, etc.
- Perform user testing to improve UX/UI
Improving usability, such as UX (user experience) and UI (user interface), is important no matter the purpose of any homepage renewal. User testing is the standard way to improve UX/UI. User testing is a qualitative research method in which consumers who match the target group of a company’s website use the company’s website according to actual usage scenarios, observe how they use it, and identify problems. This will help you improve your site because you can find out what the creators have overlooked and hear the real voices of users.
2. Comparison with your own site through competitive site analysis
- Compare content on competing sites
View and analyze competitor sites and make all kinds of comparisons with your own site. For example, what content does a competitor’s site have that your own site doesn’t? If necessary, fill in the gaps by supplementing.
- Competitive analysis using frameworks
Frameworks such as “3C analysis” and “4P analysis” are useful for analyzing and comparing your own site and competitors’ sites. In 3C analysis, you can analyze each of the 3Cs of Customer, Competitor, and Company to learn about your company’s strengths and strategies.
In 4P analysis, we compare each of the four P’s of Product, Price, Place, and Promotion with our competitors. By analyzing and comparing your homepage, you can get hints for homepage renewal.
3. Setting goals for site renewal
If you analyze your own site and your competitors’ sites, you should be able to identify the current issues with your site. From there, we will decide which issues to solve in this homepage renewal. If you have multiple goals, prioritize them and set clear goals.
Examples include “solving issues that receive few inquiries” and “revising the entire site of your company in response to the renewal of a competitor’s site.”
Once you have set your goals, it will be easier to see your results if you also set numerical targets. For example, if you want to increase the number of inquiries, clarify the target number, such as “Increase from 5 inquiries per month to 15 inquiries.”
Things to keep in mind when renewing your homepage
Once the goal of homepage renewal is clear, we will move forward with concrete steps toward renewal. Here are some things you should be especially careful about. Please use this as a check item before and after renewal.
1. Do not change the domain as much as possible If you do not need to change the domain when renewing your homepage, we recommend that you do not change the domain as much as possible. For users who have bookmarked your company’s homepage, if the domain changes, it will be a hassle to have them bookmark it again. Additionally, there is a risk of lowering your ranking in search engines, and you will have to take the time to change the URLs on your company’s business cards and pamphlets.
2. Redirect when changing the domain If it is necessary to change the domain, it is necessary to properly redirect from the old page to the new page. A redirect is when a user is automatically directed to another page when they visit one page. This is something you definitely want to do, as it may cause inconvenience to users who visit the old page after the renewal, and it may also be negative from an SEO perspective.
If the redirect is not done, for example, Google will treat the new page as a separate page, and the page’s rating will be reset once. Therefore, after a renewal, your ranking in search results may drop suddenly.
When renewing your homepage, you can have search engines show your new page in search results by setting up a redirect using a 301 redirect. Also, when changing the domain, it is important to change the old URL of the internal link to the new URL and carefully check the link.
3. Set up a 404 error page If there is a page that was deleted when the site was renewed, you need to set it up so that a 404 error page is returned when that page is accessed. If a page simply says “Not Found,” users will leave. By displaying a 404 error page with friendly and detailed instructions, you can prevent users from leaving your website.
4. Keep useful content If you are renewing a homepage that already has a high SEO rating, we recommend keeping as much content as possible that is already highly rated by search engines such as Google. In particular, do not change the page title.
5. If the site structure changes, resubmit the sitemap to Google If the site structure changes after the renewal, be sure to resubmit the sitemap to Google. You can submit from Google Search Console.
summary
◆When renewing a homepage, it is important to clarify the purpose. Digging deeper into vague objectives and clarifying goals is essential to achieving results.
◆In order to analyze the current situation and set goals for renewal, it is a good idea to clarify the current issues by analyzing your own site, compare it with your own site by analyzing competitive sites, identify the issues, and then set goals for site renewal. .
◆ Things to keep in mind when renewing your homepage are: 1. Do not change the domain as much as possible. 2. Redirect when changing the domain. 3. Set up a 404 error page. 4. Leave useful content. 5. If your site structure changes, resubmit your sitemap to Google.