A website redesign is a significant investment for any higher education institution, requiring strategic planning, collaboration, and expertise. Whether you're working with a website redesign vendor in Boston or beyond, understanding the process can help set expectations and ensure a smooth transition. From research and architecture to design and development, this guide will walk you through the website redesign process, outlining key steps to create a modern, user-friendly, and accessible website that meets your institution’s goals.
Discovery & research
The first phase of a higher education website redesign is discovery. This step is all about gathering insights and defining the strategy for your new website.
Goals
What do you hope to achieve with your new website? Whether it’s enhancing user experience, implementing new features, or improving SEO, setting clear objectives ensures that the redesign aligns with your institution’s needs. Identifying what is and isn’t working on your current site provides a solid foundation for improvement.
Stakeholder management
Stakeholder identification and management are key in website redesign to ensure the project aligns with the needs and expectations of all involved parties, from end-users to decision-makers. Actively engaging stakeholders throughout the process helps gather valuable insights, address potential conflicts early, and ensure a smooth process for making decisions that move the project forward efficiently.
Audience
Understanding your audience is crucial. Who is visiting your website, and what are they looking for? Whether prospective students, faculty, or alumni, each user group has different goals. Creating user personas and journey maps can help guide the design and content strategy, ensuring a seamless experience for all visitors.
Peers and competitors
Analyzing peer institutions and competitors provides insights into top website redesign trends in higher ed. What are they doing well? What could be improved? Benchmarking against others helps identify opportunities to stand out.
Analytics
Data-driven decision-making is key. By reviewing site analytics, you can assess user behavior—what pages they visit, how long they stay, and where they drop off. This information informs design and functionality choices, ensuring an optimized website redesign tailored to user needs.
Content audit
Before restructuring your site, it's essential to evaluate existing content. A content audit helps determine what should be kept, revised, or removed, ensuring a streamlined and relevant site structure.
Architecture and user experience
Once the research phase is complete, the next step is building the foundation of the new website.
Content strategy
Content strategy is key in creating a great user experience and meeting your organizational goals. What information needs to be on each page? What existing content can be repurposed, and what needs to be created from scratch? A strong content strategy ensures the new website meets your organizational goals, drives SEO, and builds user engagement. To truly create a content-informed website design, it is critical to think about content strategy from the beginning, and integrate it throughout the rest of the architecture and user experience phase.
Sitemap
A sitemap outlines the structure of the redesigned website, defining page hierarchy and navigation. This step ensures an intuitive and logical site structure, essential for an ADA-compliant accessible website design and a great user experience. This is often an iterative processes, as content strategy will influence the sitemap and the sitemap may evolve as more content strategy work is done.
Wireframes
Wireframes act as the blueprint for the website, mapping out page layouts and content hierarchy. These wireframes help visualize how information will be presented and ensure alignment before moving into design. This is also a very iterative process, taking a content-first approach to design, the wireframes will change as the content strategy evolved. Content strategy, the sitemap, and the wireframes are all iterative and interconnected.
Functionality and technical discovery
This phase also involves identifying necessary integrations, such as CRM systems, accessibility tools, hosting, or interactive elements. Determining the content management system, such as WordPress or Drupal, and identifying development needs accordingly ensures a seamless user experience. Our developers lead technical discovery to ensure the new website encompasses all technical features it needs and to plan an efficient website build.
Design & development
With a solid foundation in place, the next step is bringing the website to life.
Design mockups
Building upon the wireframes, design mockups incorporate design elements such as colors, typography, and branding. These mockups provide a visual representation of the final website, offering opportunities for feedback and iteration.
Development
During development the website is coded and built. Whether opting for a custom Drupal website design or a custom WordPress website design, development involves translating design mockups into a fully functional website. Attention to WCAG-certified accessible website design ensures compliance with accessibility standards.
A successful higher education website redesign requires thoughtful planning, strategic execution, and collaboration with the right website design company in Boston or beyond. By following a structured website redesign process, institutions can create an intuitive, visually compelling, and accessible digital presence that meets the needs of their diverse audiences.
If you’re looking for a higher education website redesign company to guide you through this process, partnering with an experienced WordPress or Drupal website design and development vendor can help you achieve your goals effectively.
Ready to start your website redesign journey? Contact us today to learn about our approach, discuss your project, and explore how we can create a custom solution tailored to your institution’s needs.
