What Not to Do
You obviously don’t want to spend time on large-scale projects that may then need to start from scratch with the new site or increase the scope of your website redesign project. It’s smart to set some internal guidelines for the duration of the redesign project so that if topics come up, you can quickly determine whether they are worth the short-term investment or not. Examples of projects that could be a waste of time or money while you’re investing in a website redesign:
- Significant new functionality that would then need to be created for both sites.
- Adding a large amount of new pages because that would also impact both sites.
- Making significant brand updates.
5 Key Marketing Priorities for Banks and Credit Unions
A custom website redesign can take many months and during this time, your institution undoubtedly has one or more of these goals.
Goal 1: Growth & Acquisition
Every institution is focused on growing relationships with existing customers/members while also attracting new ones. This typically involves a mix of:
Developing an integrated campaign with an attractive offer driving towards a landing page on your website will allow you to support your growth goals.
Goal 2: Customer/Member Experience Continuity
While your current site may not be as optimized for user experience as your new one will be, there are still many low-effort ways that you can improve how visitors interact with your site. While this may vary by site this could include:
- Evaluating the “above the fold” information on product detail pages to ensure key conversion actions are obvious.
- Identifying your top products/services and re-thinking the content strategy using existing site components.
- Building existing products/services to appeal to key life stages of your target audiences (note this could have an impact on your new site too).
- Optimizing imagery and code for faster page loading.
Goal 3: Insights, Analytics & Benchmarking
It’s essential to have robust data on your current website performance. Without analytics customization, Google Analytics will give you good, but not great information – especially if your key conversions happen on a third-party platform. In addition, how will you be able to quantitatively measure the success of your new site if you don’t have benchmark data from your current site? This is where investing in analytics and reporting for your current site becomes vital.
- Evaluate what is lacking in your current tracking plan and have a skilled agency fill in the gaps.
- Ensure that any cross-domain tracking that is possible is setup with all account opening vendors that allow for this.
- Create reports that pull this data into meaningful insights for you to invest more in what’s working and less in what’s not. While this is also an investment you need to make in your redesigned website too, there are efficiencies so that custom analytics for your new site is less time-consuming. Much of this work can be repurposed with the new site since your agency will be recreating any existing event tracking and adding any new tracking required.
Goal 4: Launch Strategy and Go to Market
Designing and building a new website isn’t just a big deal for your institution – it’s exciting for customers/members too! Use this project as a way to generate buzz and buy in – which will then help seamlessly transition folks to your new site on launch day.
- Create an integrated launch campaign which will both educate visitors about what’s coming but also introduce them to the new site when it launches. This should include a combination of pre and post-launch tactics.
- Consider adding a site tour to your redesigned website – either built into the CMS or as a video tour that you can also use in other platforms.
- Don’t forget to support your internal team communications too. Provide FAQs and any additional materials that can help them feel comfortable during the transition.
Goal 5: Risk, Compliance and Stability
While marketing teams like to focus on conversions and education, we can’t lose sight of the importance of ensuring everything on your current site follows risk and security best practices. Pumping the breaks on this for your current site leaves your site vulnerable and also has potential negative brand implications.
- Follow all WCAG 2.2 ADA compliance guidelines for your current site and continue to invest in ADA scanning services. You need to maintain an inclusive digital experience and also avoid litigation.
- Website security should be a top priority for your institution. Ensuring that you have the right security solutions in place in your hosting environment will help avoid cyberthreats and incidents. You’ll of course want the same solutions for your new site as well.
Your digital agency should be able to work with you to simultaneously plan the right tactics for your current site while creating a fresh strategy for your new site. ZAG interactive would love to talk to you about your next website redesign and supporting services.
