How To Measure Website Success In A Redesign: Goals, KPIs & ROI
Your website is your most important asset in your digital marketing toolbox—it’s the primary way to showcase your brand and direct users to your products and services. If you are considering a website redesign or are even in the process of redesigning right now, do you know how to measure website success? If not, don’t fret! We understand there are so many thoughts to consider when evaluating website key performance indicators such as organic traffic visitors, average engagement time and conversions. However, taking the time to think through your key performance indicators (KPIs) for a website redesign will pay off in the long run.
Website Redesign ROI Considerations
When thinking about redesigning your website, focusing solely on the new design is common—will the site fit your brand’s aesthetic? Will users think the design is cool or quirky? While these questions are important, there are several non-aesthetic considerations to think about when redesigning your website. These factors are crucial to consider in the planning stages of your redesign to make sure your business remains successful.
- Cost: What are you willing to pay for both the creation and maintenance of a website?
- Traffic: Will the site be SEO optimized so users can easily find your content?
- Conversion Rate: Once people arrive at your site, are they taking action?
- Website Lifespan: How long are you planning on this redesign lasting for?
The cost of a website redesign is often what people are most nervous about, and we understand that. A well-designed website is a large investment. However, if the site is designed with strategic care, the website can pay for itself with the amount of leads and prospects it brings in. Taking the time to thoroughly strategize your website redesign goals will help guide your decision making to ensure your new site is user friendly and optimized for organic search results to drive relevant traffic.
Website Redesign Goals: How To Measure The Success Of A Website Redesign
The first step when redesigning is to evaluate your current website. What don’t you like about your existing site? What are your website wishlist items? How effective is your site at driving conversions? We recommend conducting an SEO audit to see where the biggest errors lie, as well as looking into your Google Analytics and Google Search Console properties to evaluate current metrics and performance. You can use these findings to create SMART goals—Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound—for your new website.
Specific: Set specific goals to keep expectations aligned for what is possible in a website redesign. For example, a broad goal of “I want to increase website traffic” can be rephrased into “I want to increase website traffic by 20% year-over-year.”
Measurable: Ensure your goals can be quantifiably measured to track website redesign ROI. Our team uses tools such as Google Tag Manager (GTM) to track various elements on your website that can be reviewed in Google Analytics. Elements could include, but are not limited to:
- Clicks to call
- Clicks to email
- File downloads
- Form submissions
- Video views
Achievable: Consider your ideal timeline and budget to set attainable goals and avoid frustration. Available internal resources, technical limitations and historical website performance should all be considered when setting redesign objectives.
Relevant: Take your overall business objectives, company mission and audience into account when setting relevant targets. For example, if the majority of conversions come through service pages, prioritizing your blogs doesn’t strategically make sense when planning a redesign.
Time-bound: Redesigning a website can be a time-consuming process depending on the size, intricacy and customization goals. Establish realistic timeline expectations and deadlines up front to make sure everyone is on the same page.
Once you have your SMART goals set, you’ll have clear targets that can influence your decision making, help you allocate resources efficiently and track progress effectively.
Choosing KPIs For Your Website Redesign
After determining your SMART goals, the time has come to develop your list of KPIs to track progress of your specific website redesign goals and objectives. While there’s an endless list of potential KPIs to choose from, we’ve curated our top three KPI recommendations to consider.
Organic Traffic
Driving organic users to your website is one of the most valuable types of traffic. When paired with a strong SEO strategy, you can bring visitors to your site with a relevant and specific intent for your products and services. The more users who click to your site directly from search results, the more likely Google and other search engines are going to view your website as a relevant resource, increasing your rankings for SERPs.
Page Load Times & Core Web Vitals
When redesigning your website, page speed and Core Web Vitals are important aspects to consider. Core Web Vitals (or CWVs as we often say) are measurements Google uses to judge and improve websites. These metrics are a big part of what Google calls the "page experience," which is their way of measuring how usable web pages are for users. If your website follows CWV best practices, you are likely providing a good user experience. Google benefits from happy users, which is why good CWV scores often result in higher rankings. We recommend conducting a CWV audit before redesigning your site. If your scores aren’t where you want them to be, developing a KPI around increasing CWV scores would be a good place to start.
Conversions
Conversions, now called key events in GA4, are valuable actions taken by users that result in moving a user further down the sales funnel. This could include form submissions, a click to call, click to email, or online purchase. When we design websites for our clients, conversions are top of mind for our team; we ensure each page has a logical next step a user can take, whether we use CTA buttons or link a form at the bottom of a page. No matter what types of conversions are valuable to your business, having a KPI regarding these key events is an important aspect to consider for your website redesign.
Measure Website KPIs With A GA4 Events & Conversions Strategy
When evaluating your SMART goals, having measurable results is crucial to prove your overall website redesign ROI and lead generation success. That’s why having a thorough event and conversion strategy is key to tracking your new website progress. Our team works with clients to develop and track valuable key events via GA4 and GTM so you can accurately measure performance on your website.
Creating Content With Website KPIs In Mind
Once your new website is live, the work isn’t over! To continue building SEO value, increasing organic rankings and driving relevant traffic, we recommend content on your redesigned website that follows SEO best practices.
CTA Buttons
Include clear call-to-action buttons on pages to encourage conversions. Whether you want to encourage users to learn more about a product or service or guide them to fill out a form on a contact page, CTA buttons are visually engaging page elements that allow you to move users down the sales funnel.
Keyword Research
Ensure your content appears for relevant queries in search results by conducting keyword research before writing page content. Keyword research helps ensure you include high-volume and/or hyper-relevant terms and questions that your audience is actively looking for into your page copy.
Internal Linking
To increase your website’s average engagement time, which can help increase rankings in SERPs, use internal linking to connect related pieces of content. Users who are interested in one topic may be interested in another; internal linking provides a smooth user experience to showcase similar content to your audience.
While the examples above are just a few of the relevant SEO best practices to keep in mind when developing content, we encourage you to take a look at the many additional ways you can increase on-page SEO value.
Wondering How A Website Redesign Can Improve ROI? You’re In The Right Place
Whether you’re in the early stages of considering a website redesign, or you need digital marketing support post-launch, we’d love to talk! From website design to branding and SEO, our team is equipped to answer any questions you have about how to measure website success. Learn more about our website design and development services, or contact us to get in touch with our digital marketing team.
Hannah Burke
Hannah Burke graduated from Iowa State University with her degree in Advertising. As a Digital Marketing Specialist at Blue Compass, Hannah excels in helping clients develop a solid SEO foundation to set them up for success in search results. Hannah is always eager to expand her knowledge of all things digital to enhance her marketing capabilities.