Considering that your website needs to evolve with your business, you should re-evaluate your website design every six months and confirm that it’s still making a positive contribution to your business.

In some scenarios, a website redesign will actually cause you to lose traffic. This typically happens for two reasons. First, the business and marketing agency have failed to come up with a transition plan to minimize the risk of traffic loss. Second, the company’s search engine optimization strategy was not a consideration when designing the website.

When considering a redesign of your website, it’s imperative that you talk to your agency about how they will minimize traffic loss. Here are several additional reasons why you’re experiencing a drop in traffic after redesigning your website:

1. Redirects were not done correctly.
When your website is redesigned, you must use redirects to direct searchers to the new and improved website. You should always use 301 redirects as they will communicate to search engines to pass the rankings from your old website to your new website. In addition, the redirect should send searchers to a page on your new website that is similar to one on your old website instead of the new homepage with every redirect.

2. Updates to website copy may cause the relevancy score of pages to drop.
It’s standard to update the website copy when enhancing a website design. However, when giving the content on your website a refresh, it’s important to be strategic about the keywords that you want your business to rank for. Search engine optimization needs to be a priority for your business when completing a website redesign.

3. Pages on your website were deleted.
When you delete pages on your website, you risk creating a content gap which negatively impacts the user journey. A content gap can cause the ranking that a page previously earned to plummet and traffic to drop.

While it’s important that your business continues to tweak and enhance the design of its website to create brand awareness and generate more revenue, you must factor in how a website design will impact your traffic. Working with a marketing agency that is experienced in website design and SEO will help to ensure that your transition to a new website design goes smoothly and that your website traffic doesn’t suffer as a result.

Are you experiencing a drop in your website traffic and want to know why? Contact us for an audit of your website to determine why you’re losing traffic and what you can do to improve your search ranking.