Evolving technologies has compelled many organizations to re-look at their web presence from time to time. No company would want to retain the same 90’s style static website in the age of responsive design and smartphones. All this is pretty good, but what happens to the conversion rate? How will you know if your target audience will find the new site appealing enough for a successful conversion?

Below are some key points that can be taken care of at time of development process to ensure that conversion isn’t impacted negatively due to revamping of website –

1. Speed – This is a factor that can be very easily checked at time of development and testing. Speed of page load is directly proportional to conversion rate as 80% of user experience is built around how much time it takes to load a page of your site.

The solution –

1. Google Analytics – If you are integrating this powerful tool within your website, then you can also check for speed along with the host of other features it offers. Go to ‘Behavior’-> ‘Site Speed’-> ‘Overview Report’.
2. Page load tests – PageSpeed Insights by Google and pingdom also offer page load testing and monitoring to help you gauge how is your website doing in terms of speed of page load.

In case you determine that the brand new website is lagging in speed, then it will be better to make the tweaks to eliminate speed drain culprits and then release, rather than witness the slow website take your conversion rate for a toss.

2. Content – the good thing about content is that even search engine behemoths now acknowledge its criticality. With the recent Hummingbird algorithm updates, Google has made it clear that it will prefer those sites that have meaningful and relevant content rather than keyword stuffed content.

The solution –

Having a well-researched and well written content is just one side of the story. Molding the content       to answer exactly what your customers are looking for, is a totally different ball game altogether. For       instance, writing on a new home cleaning product available can be accomplished by blogging on “Tips       for better home cleaning” rather than “XT-35 with round bristles now available”, because it is the       former that the users will query for.

3. SEO – This is the best way to propel your conversion rate (or lose out on it). While being technologically advanced, your website needs to embrace SEO qualities without which it will not be noticed by the users or your target audience. If the new site doesn’t adhere to prevalent SEO norms, then say goodbye to positive conversion.

The solution –

1. Meaningful URLs – www.abc.com/blog/top-10-apps.html certainly looks better than www.abc.com/cgi-bin/s=23
2. Re-directs – Make sure that all 301/302 re-directs do not lead to a dead end
3. Webmaster tools – Use Bing tools and Google webmaster tools. With this search engine giants allow your customers to find you before your competitors

Technology has proved to be the biggest disruptive force of recent times, thus inducing companies to re-design their websites. By referring to these points in the development stage, make sure that the re-design isn’t at the cost of conversion.