HOW TO REDESIGN AN EXISTING WEBSITE AND MIGRATE TO PRODUCTION?

If you are a freelance website designer, developer, or run an agency, chances are that a large part of your business involves in redesigning existing websites. Most potential customers already have a website, but many of them are old, probably designed and coded cheaply, and need to be rebuilt. Some clients have a static website that needs to be replaced with a shiny new WordPress website.

In this article I will discuss some best practices in this regard. I’ll outline the questions you need to ask your client, and the technical information you need, and walk you through the steps to create and launch a new WordPress site for your client.

Every situation will be different, so some of these tips will prove more helpful, so make sure you ask all the relevant questions upfront so you can take the right steps and not have to redo the work halfway through the Project. The topics I’m going to cover are:

• Goals and brief
• Hosting and Domains
• Design and Branding
• Content
• Development

Let’s start with the first thing you need to understand: the brief!

THE GOALS AND BRIEF

Before you can begin work on your client’s new website, or even before you can accurately bid on the job, you must fully understand the guidelines.

This includes some things the customer would like you to know and some things they may not have thought of. It can also include things that interest the customer but are not really feasible.

Here are some questions you will need to ask are:

• What is the context? What is this business? How should it develop? This is important as the website needs to meet broader business goals.
• What other marketing tools does the client use? Which are online and how will they be integrated into the website?
• What is the target audience for the business and the website? This will impact the design, content as well as other social media channels the client is using or wants to use alongside their website.
• Will the site include e-commerce, reservations, or other processes? How does it fit into the client’s marketing funnel?
• Who are the parties involved? It can be severe I once built a website for a client where the project manager oversaw the entire project, signed off on the work, and paid my bills. Then when we were about to start it, she showed it to the general manager, who said she didn’t like the project and wouldn’t release it. Since then I’ve learned to see who has the last word!
• Who will be involved in the ongoing content and managing the site? You need to learn how to do it, which can be part of your job.

Depending on the customer and their needs, these questions trigger further follow-up questions. Make sure you understand what are requirements before making any design suggestions.

DESIGN AND BRANDING

Part of the brief will be designing the website and adapting it to the branding the client is using elsewhere. In my experience, this is where problems can arise. Some customers have a fixed idea of ​​the design they want and it doesn’t always fit their site.

If a client asks you to copy another website, ask them what they like and explain how you can use those elements to create a unique design. You don’t want to face legal troubles once your website is up and running.

And if a customer wants to copy a competitor’s website, you should defend yourself or even refuse. Once I got a call from a prospect who wanted to start a car rental business and copy the Hertz website. I tried to explain why it wouldn’t be a good idea, both from a design and business perspective, but he insisted. I told him I wouldn’t take the job, because we don’t know if I’ve ever found a developer prepared for this!

Make sure you understand what the client is trying to achieve with the design, not just what the website should look like. With your web design and development experience, you can probably recommend something more relevant to your brand and business.

The client should provide resources and information to integrate their brand into their website theme:

• Logos and other branding images, preferably in transparent PNG files
• Color references
• Fonts

Sometimes the font used by the client to take your brand offline to advertise, it is not available as a web font. Work closely with the client to find an alternative font to use on their website. If the client is a new business or changing brands, it may be easier to find a new font that is available both online and offline.

HOSTING AND DOMAINS

You need to know where the site is hosted. Does the customer have their own hosting or do they need it from you? Will they use an existing domain or switch domains?

If a customer has an existing website that uses their domain name and the new website uses the same domain name, you have three options:

• Build the website locally or on a test or development server. When it’s ready to go live, simply put your domain on maintenance mode and submit your new site. This leads to downtime, so not all customers will be happy with it. We recommend that you build all software on a development server or local machine, but you will likely need to make it available online via a private link so the client can connect during
• Create a new website on a second domain that you keep private until it’s ready to go Once the new website is up and running, delete the old website and redirect the domain name to the new one.
• Create your site in a subdirectory of your existing domain and ask WordPress to use that subdirectory for your root site when it’s ready to go

If you don’t have access to an existing hosting or domain, you need a client that provides it. It can be difficult. Sometimes your customer doesn’t have the technical knowledge to know what you need. And sometimes the previous supplier cannot be reached or refuses to pass it on. I have a client whose website I managed for two years before his former web designer dropped one of his domain names. Luckily we were able to use another one that the customer had registered himself.

If your customer doesn’t know what you need, just ask them to forward you the first email they’ve ever received from a hosting provider and/or domain registrar. This should give you everything you need to access your domain and hosting.

TRANSFERRING A DOMAIN TO ANOTHER REGISTRAR

If your client wants to transfer a domain to a new provider as part of a website rebuild, or if you’d rather keep all the domains you manage with your provider, you’ll need to transfer them. The procedure depends on the existing and new domain registrar and the country where the domain is registered. Your registrar should be able to provide you with all the details. You need to release the domain from the old registrar and then register it with the new registrar. Unless the domain is about to expire, it should be free.

TRANSFERRING A SITE TO ANOTHER HOSTING PROVIDER

If a client wants to transfer their website to another host or have you host it, you need to ensure that the domain is pointed to the new host when the website is ready to go live. I usually use a temporary domain or subdirectory during development and then redirect the domain for execution. This means you don’t have to maintain the new site in the same place as the old site.

CREATING A NEW SITE IN A SUBDIRECTORY OF AN EXISTING STATIC SITE

If you need to upload a new site to the same location as an existing static site, you don’t need to delete the old website until the new website is ready to go live. Just create a new website in a subdirectory of your existing website, remember to disable access to search engines, and make sure only people who know the password can view the new website.

When you are ready to start, you can export/import website content from the subdirectory to the main page. This only takes a few minutes.

CONTENT

All websites need content, but it’s surprising how little attention many customers pay to it.

Determine in advance who and when will be responsible for delivering and downloading content. Will they send you content to add to your site during development, or do you have to give them access to do so? If you have to, make sure you charge for it.

You also have to think about the navigation. If the customer adds their own pages to the site, they must add them to the navigation menu(s). You may need to teach them, although I think most clients already have someone fairly familiar with WordPress. However, don’t assume that an employee running a simple WordPress blog from home will be able to manage a complex website with custom post types, taxonomies, and plugins.

If the customer already has a website, they may want to import the content. However, if you’ve used WordPress or another content management system, you can use an import tool, although you may need to reassign post types later. If your old site is static, it probably doesn’t have much content, and importing it manually won’t take long. You may still need to update it with new content.

DEVELOPMENT

The environment you use for development depends on how you normally work. If you are part of a team, you might have a local network that everyone can access or an online development server.

Sometimes you need client approval to work. If you come in person, you can simply bring your laptop with you. However, if they are signing work remotely, they need a remote location that the public cannot access.

You can do this with a plugin or by placing it on a password-protected server – see the Domains section above for some suggestions.

Once your website can go live, you need to migrate to a live server. Make sure you plan ahead and have a secure and strong system to do it. Using a deployment tool can simplify things. Or you can do it manually by following these instructions.

PLANNING AND UNDERSTANDING ARE KEY TO REDESIGNING A CLIENT SITE

If you’ve been tasked with redesigning a website for a client, it pays to take the time to really understand the project and plan how you’re going to carry it out. If you follow the steps above and make sure you know the answers to all the questions I’ve listed, you shouldn’t go too far wrong.