5 Mistakes to Avoid When Redesigning Your Drupal Website

Drupal web development can be challenging sometimes—depending on the knowledge of the one performing it. On one side, this popular content management system provides amazing opportunities for customizing websites to meet the specific needs of brands, boosting web traffic, and business recognition. 

On the other hand, Drupal web development requires skilled developers and site builders that master the art of the Drupal project. We, at Optasy, know that Drupal web development can be challenging and keep many developers up at night. That's why we crafted this article to help you on your journey with Drupal.

More exactly, this post covers five mistakes to avoid when redesigning your Drupal website. It will help you gain key insights into the technical, creative, operational, financial, and strategic decisions that you have to consider through your Drupal web development journey. 

Let's roll up our sleeves and start learning from the mistakes of others.

But first, how do you identify when it's time for a website redesign?

• Your website is not mobile-responsive. To avoid losing credibility and value, your website has to be optimized for a wide range of devices. Since 52% of all website traffic comes from mobile nowadays, optimizing your Drupal website for mobile is a must. 
• Navigation on your website is slow. Online visitors are now expecting seamless digital experiences at the tip of their fingers. A poorly functional website will chase them away and affect your brand's credibility. 
• Your website is more than five years. As the digital landscape is changing at a rapid pace, a complete revamp for your Drupal website is necessary from time to time.

Now that you have a clearer picture of whether you should plan a redesign project for your Drupal website or not, it's essential to understand what you should avoid doing in this process. 

#1 Mistake

Skipping the analysis of your existing website.

To solve an issue, you must be aware of it in the first place, right? The most successful companies are proficient at analyzing and identifying challenges in their workflows and proactively search for ways to overcome them. 

To evolve you must focus on your vulnerabilities and clearly define your weak spots. Only then, you can gain a sharper perspective of your destination. 

Key questions to ask yourself when analyzing your current Drupal website are:

• How many visitors is my website attracting?
• What's the average loading speed of my site?
• Is the bounce rate too high?
• Where does my website rank on SERPs?

#2 Mistake

Redesigning without a clear purpose.

Like all things in life, your redesign strategy should have a well-defined goal (or goals). You can't build a lasting plan without first outlining its primary purposes. With that in mind, here are the main questions that can help you craft precise objectives:

• Where do you want your Drupal website to be in the next six months?
• How will the new versions of my pages help me reach my goals?
• What digital tools do I need in order to accomplish my objectives?

When drawing your redesign plan, you need to know why you are doing it and then align your site updates with your marketing goals.

#3 Mistake

Not establishing analytics benchmarks.

Now that you've gained a clearer perspective of your Drupal redesign plan and goals, it's time to start focusing on setting metrics related to the performance of the old version of your website. Google Analytics is a reliable resource that can help you with this, by providing these types of benchmarks:

• Visits that actually lead to sales conversions
• How much time users spend on site, overall visits, and banner click-through rates
• Lead generation 

When it comes to SEO, these are the metrics you should try to benchmark:

• Website traffic
• Organic traffic-generating pages
• Inbound links
• Conversion rates

#4 Mistake

Not investing enough resources in a robust content strategy.

Content is still king. Around 70% of companies actively invest in content marketing. Why is content marketing so important?

Because it answers your audience's questions. It helps businesses build trust and generate more high-quality leads. 

That's why you should redesign your Drupal website with content in mind and consider the pain points of your audience when crafting your content strategy. 

What does a content strategy for the website look like?

• Defined goals and target audience
• Analytics & SEO review
• Content inventory & audit
• Style guidelines and publishing strategy
• Omnichannel/cross-platform considerations
• SEO strategy and metadata standards

#5 Mistake

Ignoring your competition. 

Competitive intelligence refers to the ability to gather, analyze, and leverage insights related to your competitors in order to better understand the market and make stronger strategic decisions. 

How to get started with competitive intelligence?

Step 1: Know your competitors. Determine which are your top five direct competitors and then your indirect, aspirational, and perceived rivals. 

Step 2: Collect your intel. This might be the most time-consuming part of the competitive intelligence process. At this point, you want to take the time to explore your competitors' online presence, products, websites, social media posts, teams, content, etc. 

Step 3: Craft your competitive analysis. Once you've gathered your intel, you should focus on breaking down the data and organize the findings such as trends or key insights so that you can easily communicate them throughout your enterprise. 

Step 4: Turn competitive intelligence into results. Make your data actionable and leverage it to benefit your overall business tactics. 

Wrapping up

Having these key insights on board when you start your Drupal redesign project will help you navigate the whole process a lot easier. 

Optasy can also support you in getting more out of your Drupal website with top-notch Drupal web development, maintenance, and support offerings—whether you want to build or upgrade your Drupal site.

Have a look and contact us if you want to accelerate your digital transformation.

Image credit: mohamed_hassan on Pixabay.