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Website Redesign – A Double-Edged Sword

Relaunching a website is usually a very exciting job but is the effort really worth it? We, at 411 Locals, have been in the industry long enough, and we have seen how trends change and some of our websites really needed a redesign. Also, a lot of customers have requested certain changes. Although these changes are meant to be good for your business or the clients you work for, this can be a real double-edged sword for your PPC program. Columnist Pauline Jakober has recently posted an article about that and here is what it is about:

What can go wrong with website redesigns?

While many webmasters think that relaunching a website or just redesigning it is good news for PPC, experience showed that this is not entirely true. Truth is, a website relaunch can actually sabotage your PPC program or at least temporarily. The most common case is to miss an important element or functions (that are critical for PPC advertising) to get dropped in the process.

  1. Phone Numbers
  2. Trust Signals
  3. Tracking Codes
  4. Forms

If you are a webmaster using a platform such as WordPress, Wix, etc, it is extremely important to check all your pages if there are missing elements. The most common cases are missing phone numbers. Sometimes the phone number is still presented, but it is in much smaller size and hard to spot.

Another common case is missing testimonial pages, certification badges, and discount stickers. These elements play a huge role in paid search, and you should not give them up for a new design!

Let us now talk about tracking codes. These return data that allow us to know exactly what is going on with a certain account. Without these data, we are basically running accounts blindfolded. See the list of the most important codes you should really pay close attention to.

  • Google Analytics
  • Remarketing
  • Website call metrics
  • AdWords conversion

The impact of losing even one of these is very real. If you do not have a marking team that looks at these data, you might not realize that something is off, which leads to our next topic, do you really need that data?

If you are running a serious PPC campaign, then yes, you should care about this data. And if you are able to run it by yourself or with a small team, this is good for you. If not, you should really consider expanding your business or just giving it up. Yes, if you are only using your website as an online catalog or just advertising your product, feel free to change the design whenever you feel like it. Just pay closer attention to whether the phone number and all the forms are where they are supposed to be. However, if your primary income depends on the PPC campaign you are running, you should be really careful with all the elements mentioned above.

We, at 411 Locals, really appreciate your sincere thoughts on this topic. Feel free to drop your comments down below.