After months of planning and brainstorming, we’re thrilled and proud to announce the launch of the refreshed Reef website!
While it wasn’t easy bidding our old site goodbye, the new site is a reflection of the growth and change we’ve undergone over the past decade. It mirrors our key strengths in PPC and SEO but now with more emphasis on the vital role of Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO), the importance of understanding the online customer journey, and building campaigns around that.
As you browse through the new site, you’ll now be able to clearly understand how these services will help you drive growth and competitive advantage.
There’s also a host of small structural, navigational and aesthetic improvements on the site to answer your most important questions while also creating a great user experience.
5 Key Learnings from Reef’s Website Refresh
A website redesign is never easy and we’ve learnt a lot from this project. Reef’s Director and Co-founder, Chris Redshaw, shares lessons that will benefit you if you’re thinking of a website revamp now or in the distant future:
1. Answer your audience’s most important questions: Also make it very easy for them to find these answers in your navigation and on-page copy. For e.g. the most important questions to Reef’s audience are: ‘Who are you?’, ‘What can you do for me?’, ‘Why you?’, ‘Prove it?’ and ‘What is something easy and value rich for me to say yes to?’ (your offer).
2. Field test any new messaging: It’s ideal to gather feedback around the messaging on your site even before you put it up there. Everything written on our new site has been used in successful pitches and reflects our real service offering, so we know first-hand that it’s what our clients want to hear and is congruent with what we’re offering.
3. Be ready to go back to the drawing board over and over: The website refresh process was anything but linear because we were enhancing the brand and creating a stronger foundation for the future. We must have thrown away hundreds of concepts, assets and lines of copy. But once you have a strong foundation, future iteration becomes easier.
4. Be conservative with major SEO changes (if you can afford to be): Search engines like Google take time to make perfect sense of the changes that come with a website redesign. So it’s okay to play it safe. For instance, we decided to keep our old URL structure rather than go with the one we really want. When the dust settles, we can begin changing URLs of key pages one at a time, if we need to.
5. Keep extra web development time: Even after you’ve run a fine-toothed comb through your site, some bugs are bound to emerge over time. So keep an eye on your Google Analytics and Search Console for any user issues or 404 errors – and factor in extra web development time to fix them.
This has been a true team effort. To Matt, Jennie and all the people who have given input on this new site, thank you. It wouldn’t be what it is without you – not by a long shot!
If you would like to share thoughts or feedback on the new Reef website, we welcome them at hello@reefdigital.com.au.