There’s something particularly exciting about launching a brand new website. Sometimes you can also just make a few changes — usually fresh content and improved navigation — and get great results.
But there is a point at which an existing website really needs a redesign. I’d like to show you a couple of examples of redesigns I’ve worked on lately.
Today, let’s consider Clevertech, a custom software developer in the New York metro area. CEO Kuty Shalev designs software apps that keep businesses and nonprofits in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut happy and efficient.
Here’s his old website:
There were some cool things about this website. For example, the part where it says “CleverTech was the accelerator” turned up a new story each time you visited the site.
Naturally, you wouldn’t know that until you visited the site a few times, but it was something to admire once you caught on. Like many websites with snazzy tech elements, the site also left the search engines behind. Those words may look like text, but in fact they’re not. They’re images with no alt tags. When google’s spiders visited, they saw nothing but the following words: “CleverTech, Technology Solutions for Business.” That’s the meta title. It doesn’t match the content on that page (there wasn’t any, from the search engines’ point of view), so really the whole page was a mystery to Google.
It might be a bit of a mystery to visitors, too. And, while mystery has its charms, you really don’t want it on your website. If you happened to be offered this page after typing “technology solutions for business” into your favorite search engine, you might not be able to tell right away that custom software for people in and around New York City was on offer here. You might actually be looking for IT support in Michigan or a network guy in Rome, but even if you wanted exactly what Kuty does, you might not stay around long enough to figure that out.
The new one, designed by Tom Hapgood is up at the top of the post.
It maintains the lowkey sophistication of the original. It has lots of content, usable navigation, and a call to action right where you need it. Both the search engines and human visitors can now tell what Clevertech does.
The new version has just gone live, and I’m looking forward to seeing some striking changes in traffic and conversions. This is one of those cases in which a redesign was absolutely the essential SEO move.
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