Here’s How to redesign your website without hurting its search engine rankings!

By | Date posted: | Last updated: August 17, 2022
Redesign Your Website

Everything needs to get renovated over time. It can be your home, your wardrobe, or your website. You look out for your home and wardrobe, here we’ll talk about the website. With time, when competition is increasing, new players are entering the industry with all modern arms and ammunitions, don’t you think your older website requires a contemporary look and feel?

If you audit your website, you may find many bottlenecks that must get removed for the sake of website performance. Maybe the conversion graph is declining because the website UX is not serving well to the users. Or there are chances, that you’ve upgraded your marketing goals that need a website redesign.

But do you know that a redesigning a website is not everybody’s cup of tea? A little mistake and you may lose traffic and ranking in search engines. It needs proper vigilance and the right strategies, thereby, the SEO of the website won’t get hurt.

Let’s see how to redesign the website without damaging its SEO and ranking in search engines.

Some basic tactics to protect your website SEO and ranking while re-designing

Get your existing website metrics

Before you begin the website re-designing process; you must check the current ranking and traffic details of the website. Scrutinize your Google Analytics account and find out all the metrics. Furthermore, note down the keywords that are bringing traffic to the website. While you crawl the website, you unearth some critical components such as title tags, meta descriptions, URLs, etc. that you might need after re-designing the website. So, try not to change these elements taking into consideration of maintaining search engine optimization.

Website sitemaps and Google Search Console also have critical data metrics to give you. Once you are done with checking all the metrics, decide the goals to re-design the website.

Take the backup before you commence the website re-designing

It is an intelligent step to take back up of your existing website before you start the re-designing process. Have the backup of every critical facet like database, plugins, files, etc. because if anything will go sideways, then you’ll be able to revert to the previous website.

A staging environment must need during the process

When you begin the website re-design process, set up a staging environment where you can test your newly created pages before you launch them. This must be an essential step because eventually, you don’t wish to make changes on the live site and have something go wrong. Besides, website re-design in a staging environment helps in finding and fixing broken links, 404 errors, and other errors before launching the website. This practice will help you keep the SEO intact.

When in staging, to prevent the page visibility from users and search engines, put a “no index tag”, and click on “discourage search engines from indexing this site”, thus Google comes to know that there is duplicate content, and it doesn’t rank the pages. Or you can disallow all the robots from crawling your website via robots.txt file.

Keep new content and structure closer to the previous one

There might not be any visible issues on the site as of now, but can you guarantee, that no problems will arise in the future as well? Even if you cannot find any problem, there is no harm in keep reviewing the website and update or re-designing it as per modern demands. But try to keep the content and structure close to the previous website and update your development team about which all tags will remain the same after re-design. If you want to drive in more customers and make them focus on the key elements in your UX/UI website design, Improve your website design for a greater user experience.

Include proper 301 redirects

When you are creating new URLs while re-designing the website, it is important to ensure that there are 301 redirects in place for every new page. Don’t forget to inform Google about new content and re-designed site structure. And as mentioned above, don’t change much in your site structure. It improves your odds of preventing the website ranking in search engines.

Set up internal links for new content that you’ve created

After the re-designing, when you are ready to launch your website, make sure you have internal links set up to new content. Because it let Google knows that you have more valuable content for users. Such pages with links get priority on indexing, and it improves website’s overall search engine ranking.

Review the schema markup

Schema markup is the semantic vocabulary which is added to the HTML code of the website that helps search engines to understand the content in a better way, which eventually impacts the website rankings. While you re-design the website, don’t forget to review schema markups, especially if you’ve manually edited the website codes to re-design the elements and the new elements need to markup with relevant tags as well.

There is a structured data testing tool to check the schema markups. To check them, just paste the schema code in the code snippet tab and you’ll be able to check all the new and old schemas. And if the website is huge, check all the URLs and wait for some time after launching the website. Your Google Search Console will give you the schema report to know the exact status of all implemented schema markups.

Audit the new website thoroughly

If you’ve done only reskinning of existing pages, then nothing much have changed on the website. But if the redesigning includes extensive changes, you must perform complete SEO audit to track the website performance and traffic. Moreover, tracking the website traffic and rankings after you re-design the website will help you know the mistakes you’ve made.

Verify Robots.txt and Meta robots

Don’t forget to include the new sitemap of the website in the robots.txt file to make crawling and indexing easier for search engines. Furthermore, check if you’ve blocked any important pages from being indexed.

Reach out to a digital marketing agency if needed

Despite following all the tactics, there are chances that you make mistakes that will lead to severe SEO issues. So, better to reach out to some digital marketing agencies. They will redesign your website without harming its SEO. They have specially trained professionals for this work, and it also lets you focus on other important facets of the business.

Wrapping up

Website redesign service is necessary. You can avoid it for some time but eventually it is needed for the sake of the performance and security of the website. The reason you avoid this important task is the SEO of the website. Because we all know how crucial it is to maintain the SEO and ranking of the website.

Here is the good news, you can re-design your website anytime you wish to, and that too without hurting its SEO. Above are the strategies that will help you out and as mentioned above the best option is to hire an agency for this critical task.

No website can stand without a strong backbone which is its SEO. Thus, maintaining the SEO is anyways important and somehow website redesign is protecting its SEO for the future.

If you are looking for a website redesign services, web design, UX/UI design, ecommerce web design, please explore our website design services and website redesign services! We also provide website development, website maintenance, and SEO services. Contact us for website revamp service, online store redesign service or ecommerce website redesign services.

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Important website design usability perceptions to implement on your website!

By | Date posted: | Last updated: July 13, 2022
website-design-usability

How do you define website usability?

What elements do you look for in a website?

Have you ever left a website in a few seconds just because it was difficult to peruse?

Ask yourself all the above questions before you blame search engines for an unstable ranking. Website usability is a broad concept. Lack of ambiguity and inappropriate placement of essential elements are the causes of website un-usability.

Albeit you try to make a user-friendly website, you do not think like a user before applying elements on the website. That is the reason un-usability occurs.

You have added too many elements or there are chances that unwanted popups and many ads are causing trouble to users while navigating. Users start exploring your website for some crucial information. Your website might have that information but the unwanted elements on the way to reach that information can increase the website bounce rate.

To put it simply, website usability is about how people understand and use the website. Thus, creating a user-friendly website with higher UX should be your focus. Obviously, you wish to design a usable and accessible website, but some unknowing mistakes reduce the traffic to your website.

Let’s pay attention to some simple website design usability ideas and improve the overall UX of websites.

Website usability – are we all on the same page?

When a user lands on your website, the elements on the website should not waste his/ her time, even a millisecond count. So, your goal should be to make the website simple and easily navigable. We have curated a few suggestions for you to create a usable website.

Create a design that is optimized for mobile

This should be understood but still, you will find many websites that are not optimized for mobiles. Such websites are hard to explore with mobile phones; either the layout is problematic, or the content is inaccessible.

The quickest way to make a mobile-first web design is to use responsive themes. The responsive themes get adjusted according to the different screen sizes. Browsing from a computer or laptop is easy. Users can find the CTAs and click even in the corners but that is not the case with the mobile phone. Finding CTAs will be difficult for mobile users if you put them in the corners or in places that are not easily visible. Thus, try to place the CTA buttons in places that are easy to click even if the user is walking or using the mobile phone with one hand only. Likewise, check the content and discover if it is accessible completely or not.

Always optimize the websites for mobiles before making them live.

Website design must comply with WCAG standards

WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) standards are made to create accessible websites for people with disabilities. These guidelines get updated regularly. Thus, you must audit the website more often for keeping up with the latest updates. WCAG says a website must be perceivable, operable, robust, and understandable. Website accessibility revolves around these four principles.

A significant number of people across the world are color blind. That implies such people have issues with some specific color processing. Therefore, try to avoid using conflicting colors on the website. Also, flashing lights and intense color background can be troublesome for people with seizures issue. Thus, make the interface presentable yet perceivable.

Further, if the website has any content with voice commands or if there is some video, it must have a caption to make it understandable for people with hearing problems. Moreover, there are users with cognitive disorders who wish to peruse your website. Ensure the website has easy-to-read and understandable content for such users.

Website navigation is an important facet. Make sure the navigation is in a logical order and users can access the content easily without putting too much effort.

Moreover, the website content must be robust, so that it can be interpreted in a correct way by assistive devices as well.

Stick to the minimalist design

It is good to be creative but do not impose your creativity on the website to enhance its look and feel. It might hurt the UX. You can try creativity on some other aspects of the website like marketing, content creation, etc., website design needs to be simple with impressive and effective UI and UX.

When users land on a website, their expectation from the website is to get the content they are looking for, and that too very quickly. Extra elements that are unwanted, can trouble the users every now and then while they explore the website, and it will ruin the whole UX. Thus, it is better to follow common design practices, such as the brand logo at the top of the screen, the search bar in the header, social media icons in the footer, and so on. You can be creative with CTA designs, header images, etc.

The common design practice does not break the expectation of users and they peruse the website comfortably.

Visual hierarchy makes the design comprehensive

First impression matters like anything. What does it mean in terms of usability? As soon as users land on your website, their eyes skim through the homepage and make a perception about the website. Thus, the website needs to have a visual presentation in a way that users can understand what they are looking at.

Avoid putting every piece of information on a single frame. It will become messy and confusing for users. Instead, place the most essential information and CTAs in the first place and in the natural focal point. Therefore, even if users are not aware of the content, they can understand which information is important.

For example, you can give bigger sizes or a different color to essential information, use spaces properly, alignment of the content must be top to bottom and left to right, proper usage of white spaces to provide visual breaks, and so on.

Visual hierarchy improves the user experience for sure.

Website must have credibility

People might feel unsafe on the website if it is not trustworthy. Thus, design a website keeping in mind this crucial factor and that is credibility. Ensure the homepage includes About us, Contact information, and a little bit of Product information. If these important pieces of information are not available on the homepage it might be suspicious to users.

Prices must be clearly mentioned with the products. Users will not like searching for prices across the pages. SaaS platforms follow this practice of hiding prices due to the discount and marketing strategies, but they have a dedicated labelled pricing page.

Furthermore, include security certificates and badges into the website design to establish credibility among users.

Content should be legible

Ensure to choose fonts that are easy to read. You might get attracted to some stylish fonts (for example, Bradley Hand ITC or fairwater script), but they might be hard to read for many.

Therefore, do not choose such fonts, instead pick simple yet easily recognizable fonts. Similarly, focus on the size of the fonts, colors, paragraph length, line spacing, headings, images, bullet points, etc. These are all critical factors that make your content readable.

Additionally, read once after your content is ready. There might be chances that the font is readable, but the background is creating some hindrance. If possible, behave like a reader to discover the problems.

Pay attention to consistency

The website design must be consistent throughout all the pages. If you will switch the layout and themes on each page, it will again impact the website UX. Therefore, be consistent with the website design.

Wrapping up

Website usability is a decisive factor in a website’s success or failure. Users will come back to your website only if they have had a pleasant first encounter. Think once, after having an annoying experience on any website, would you like to go back to the same website again?

If any of the elements of your website giving trouble, the whole design will suffer. Thus, avoid adding such troublesome elements and ensure adhering to common website design practices. Also, test the design regularly to evade fluctuations in UX.

Perhaps your design is not going to be everyone’s favourite, yet many will love it due to its usability. Put the users first and then consider using elements in website design because eventually, they are the ones who will use the design.

Skynet Technologies has expertise in both Website design and development services. If you are looking for website design services, UX/UI web design, online store design, or ecommerce website design, please explore our website design services! Also, we provide all-in-one website design services starting website redesign services, online store redesign, and ecommerce website redesign services. To know more about it, explore our website redesign services.

If you have any questions or would like to know more about how Skynet Technologies can help your business to reach one step ahead, Reach out us through below form & We'll get back to you soon!

Top 10 Important Reasons to Hire a Custom Web Design Company

By | Date posted: | Last updated: February 8, 2022
Custom Web Design Company

Your business website is the face of your business. It should have not only an impressive interface but also performance, efficiency, and reliability are the key factors of a successful website.

There are chances you might feel to create your website on your own. There are many aspects of website design including customization, integration, front-end, back-end design, UI/UX design, framework design and more.

If you have a fully dedicated in-house team for the design and development of your business website, then you not need to bother. You can choose a professional web designing company, which will deliver you a professional solution as per your requirement. Not limited to this, it can always save your time and cost. While a web design company is looking into developing your website, you can focus in your business.

Let’s discuss the main reasons why you should hire a web design company.

Reasons to hire a custom web designing company

1. To get a professional look of the website

These days, when even kids are coding and making their websites. Being an organization, you need to have a unique and attractive website design. The user interface is very important when it comes to a successful business website. A professional company will ensure an exceptionally unique design for your business.

2. To save your time

If you are running a business, you have ample responsibilities to look for. Dividing workload to correct people will surely help you in leading a successful business. Also, to make a modern website, you have to put extra effort and gain all the information about new technologies and platforms.

This all will be time taking, and it might push other important work aside. You endeavor for your website and get an ordinary outcome; then, it is of no use. Better you hire a professional to create an efficient product and save your valuable time as well.

3. To have a search engine optimized website

For a business website, it is crucial to rank on search engines and get genuine traffic. Your professional web designer will provide you a solution with all the SEO requirements. If your website is not following SEO best practices, then it won’t appear in Google and other search engine results.

To find your website on the top results of web crawlers and to increase sales, it is a wise decision to hire a professional designer.

4. To own an ADA compliant website

ADA compliance is important for a business website, and critical in the United States.

Many custom website design company are there who has an expert team of professionals who know everything about ADA compliance. They ensure to make a website entirely accessible for everyone, even for the people who have some sort of disability. So, hire a web design company and get an accessible website.

5. To give incredible user experience to your users

User experience is a much-talked term in the business world. When you have a product, it is your responsibility that your users get the right user experience. Likewise, your website should accord amazing UX to your users to ensure user loyalty and increase conversion rate. It will ultimately enhance the sales and profits of your business.

Ask your web design company to make a profound UX-giving website.

6. To acquire a robust, secure and reliable design

Your custom web design company has capacities to deliver you a product that will be 100% safe, with reliable performance. Your users will be able to surf and shop from your website without any security issues. Also, the website will not get crashed or hacked because the professional developers know all the safety norms and how to incorporate them while making the website.

7. To get a mobile-friendly website

You are aware of mobile traffic and how it impacts any business. If you don’t have a mobile amicable website, then you are losing huge business on a daily basis. Professional developers know the need for a mobile-friendly website, and they create a website for your business that is fully mobile amicable with all the required components.

8. To own a modern website with the latest technology

Your business must have a website that is built with the latest technology to match the pace of your rivals. These web development technologies keep evolving with time to give you more features, plugins, tools, etc., to increase the look, feel and functionality of your website. A professional web design company is an expert in building such websites.

9. To gain the trust of your users

If your website has an alluring first look, it will attract people to your website. Further proper navigation will help them in exploring your products and services, and then call to action will instruct them to take actions. Quick loading time, safe payment transactions, and hassle-free experience on your web page will increase your customer retention and enhance your sales as well. A professional web design company will build such a trustworthy website for you.

10. To keep your website maintained

Web design companies provide website maintenance and support of the websites they create. They have a fixed process, and support and maintenance are a part of the entire development process. The company provides you with complete support and maintains your website to keep it running without any errors or technical issues.

These are the key reasons to hire a custom web design company to make your website. But how to finalize a company among numerous options available in the market?

Select the Right Web Design Company

Ample website design companies are available, and it is confusing to choose anyone for your work. You have to find a company that has reliable and positive feedback from its customers.

You should choose a company that falls under your budget limits because exceeding your budget is not wise. Also, check their process. Their design, development, delivery, support, etc., should be properly defined. If it suits your requirement, then you can start working with them.

These are a few basic pre-requisites to find the right web design company to make your website.

Wrap-up

Website design and development is a crucial job, and it should get done by experts only. They can provide you with the best website design services which you are looking for in your business website. Also, keeping your rivals in mind is important because they are the people who impact your business directly or indirectly.

A professional web design company does all the research, and with the latest available technology, they fabricate your website. When your website starts getting conversions, and your business begins soaring high, that is the real outcome of investing in a custom web design company.

If you are looking for a custom web design, mobile-first web design, UX/UI design, ecommerce store design, mobile app design please explore our website design services! We also provide website redesign services, ecommerce store redesign services. For more information, please explore our website redesign services!

If you have any questions or would like to know more about how Skynet Technologies can help your business to reach one step ahead, Reach out us through below form & We'll get back to you soon!

The Importance of UX Design Vs UI Design in the Development of Mobile Applications!

By | Date posted: | Last updated: November 8, 2021
UX Design Vs UI Design

If your application is old and not running well in suddenly, it usually looks old-fashioned and is typically also very sluggish to use. The idea quickly comes to spice up the application with a UX designer and give it a fresh look. So, let’s take a glance at what is the difference between UX and UI anyway?

First, let’s take a look at the dry terminology:

  • UX is short for user experience.
  • UI stands for user interface.

That’s clear for now. But what are the differences in detail? We see two different goals in UI and UX:

  • A good UX should give the user a positive experience. So, it’s primarily about a feeling, an emotion of user while using your application.
  • With a good UI, the application should look great and be easy to use. So, this is more about aesthetics.

For us, the two terms cannot be so clearly separated. Let’s steer our concentration away from the software application for a short moment.

The Goal of UX and UI Design

The goal of UX web design is to reduce a user’s frustration. As a developer, we can prevent this from happening at an early stage, among other things, by reducing sources of problems and building the application as error-free as possible. In reality, however, certain mishaps cannot be avoided.

However, in this case, too, the initial annoyance of the user can be absorbed. For example, error on some pages of websites or applications re-structured in an unusual and fun way, so that the initial frustration of the visitor is put into perspective by humour.

Comparison: UX Design Vs UI Design

Both the user experience (UX) and the UI design of real things must meet in an application. This means that improving the interaction with the application (UI) will make the user feel better and have a better experience (UX) with the application. The other way around, however, we cannot say that the quality of UX can only be controlled by UI.

Assess and improve UX

The fact is: Improved UX of the application as soon as the user feels better using it and there is less frustration. We can achieve this through better UI, but not exclusively. Even with better loading times, reward elements for work done, few error messages (and if there are errors: suggested solutions), etc. we achieve a positive experience for the user.

In contrast to UI and UX is therefore not just a pure frontend topic.

Since UX has the emotions of the user as the biggest factor in the value system, it is difficult to define when an application has a good user experience. Because user’s feelings and behaviour are very subjective and difficult to grasp. And even influenced by other factors such as age and region. The use of an application triggers are different feelings in a student or a young person than in a senior citizen.

The subject of UX design is therefore a greater challenge than the inexperienced layperson might initially assume. In contrast to UI, there are many defined best practice solutions. Visit the link to know more on UX Design Vs UI Web Design.

Isn’t a better UI enough?

If the app is so complex and also more expensive in the short term, why should we need to improve the UX of the old application at all? Shouldn’t a better UI be enough?

It depends: Positive experiences with the user lead to the fact that users come back, that they want to use the application again and does not look for alternatives. If that is the goal of an application is for most of your e-commerce customers – then the development team must also focus on improving the UX.

Conclusion

UX Design Vs UI Design – In our opinion, the two cannot be juxtaposed or compared when it comes of mobile application development. UI is part of the UX.

In the event that an application is already high-performing and user-friendly and only needs a visual upgrade, someone with UI design skills is required. With matching colors and a new overall design, it can make the applications much more appealing.

However, if we want to improve the UX of an application in order to bind the user more to the application, an experienced and skilled app designer can only do this in a certain dedicated area. For example, it can improve the appearance, aesthetics and overall user experience of old-fashioned and slow application, software, web application or website.

If you are looking for application design, website design services, online store design, ecommerce website design, please explore our UX/UI web design services! We also provide website redesign services, application redesign services, online store redesign and ecommerce website redesign services. For more information, please explore our website redesign services!

If you have any questions or would like to know more about how Skynet Technologies can help your business to reach one step ahead, Reach out us through below form & We'll get back to you soon!