The Magic of a Website Redesign: Transforming Your Online Presence

What is a Website Redesign and how do you measure success? What is the process and what steps should you take?

Approaching a redesign starts with connecting and understanding you and your business. This sets the foundation for a successful redesigned website and measurable results.

Selling what you do, whether that be with a non-profit organization, or for profit business, requires communicating and conveying your message. What do you want your customer or audience to feel and how are you helping them achieve their goals?

How do you start? Research and analysis is crucial.

Start by asking and testing with real clients, volunteers, community members, family, friends, and colleagues.

Ask these 3 questions with them:

• What do you wish to see on our website and what can be improved?
• How easy do you find it to navigate the website?
• What scenarios would you find yourself visiting the site?

You can collect real, practical suggestions and find all or many use cases for how your audience perceives the website and what they wish to achieve. This helps fine tune your redesign to cater the content and design to your audience.

Then you’re ready to start building the redesigned website to achieve your needs.

Presenting your design in the best possible way is a measure of both User Experience (UX), whether your website is usable and friendly and designed well, and Search Engine Optimization (SEO), how visible is your website to your target audience and market.

Let’s take a look at 6 technical key metrics:

1. Page speed, does the site load fast on both mobile and desktop? Slow websites detract from the UX and SEO
2. Accessibility – Does it meet WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines)? Can anyone with hearing, visual impairments, colour blindness, navigate your site with ease? Is the site optimized for mobile and tablet devices? Can text be read clearly and understood by the reader for the content?
3. Analytics – What is the Engagement rate, how engaged are your visitors before leaving the website, and Session time, how long were they engaged for? BONUS – If you have analytics prior to the redesign, it is wonderful to compare! However, don’t worry as many don’t have this.
4. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Is there a sitemap generated that indexes all pages you want to appear on Google search and search engines? Are proper meta tags and open graph meta tags set up?
5. Security – Does the website have an SSL certificate? Are all the proper optimizations set up with WordPress for additional security? This is very important to protect your website.
6. Content – Is the site structured appropriately and easy to navigate?

Case Study – Results To Look For

Let’s review a Case Study for a recent client of mine, REKSAP Centres For Early Learning

REKSAP is a licensed, non-profit childcare centre with three locations in Ottawa, ON, with over 326 licensed child care spaces, governed by a community board of parents and community members.

We developed a relationship over many years, and had an idea of where they wanted to go, even prior to starting real work. This was a benefit and convenience for the early steps of a website redesign.

We rebranded and redefined their mission statement, logos, typography, colours, and assets. This allowed us to build from the ground up how we wanted to brand REKSAP’s vision. This built the key elements and guidelines for their redesigned website and/or other platforms.

I created the website in WordPress, to allow us the customization and flexibility to design the content around their goals, particularly with the launch of a new centre location.

We started with a test audience of their staff, and volunteers to review the draft.

After perfecting it, we launched the website redesign live! That’s the finish line for the project…but is it?

Let’s look at the analytics of the website itself.

We had Google Analytics measuring the prior website for many years (which is rare and lucky, however, don’t worry if it hasn’t been tracked!). It’s wonderful to compare each page’s metrics such as engagement rate and session time, before and after the redesign, to understand improvements.

Very happy to report after almost one month, we:

• Nearly doubled the engagement rate from 29% to 54% on average, meaning parents are engaged longer on pages before leaving.
• Increased the average session time from 37 seconds to 1 minute 6 seconds, meaning parents are finding more value and content when viewing all website pages and browsing longer.
• Received 1,000 Active users, meanwhile we had only 3,000 users across 8 and half months. They’re setup for more traffic, and better metrics into future months moving forward

Screenshot above shows analytics from the last month, Aug 17 – Sep 14, 2026, and compares to Jan 1, 2026 – Aug 16, 2026, below it. See the drastic improvements to how the website redesign is performing!

2 Metrics that are tracked with real genuine and practical feedback:

• Parents, families and community members told us how it was so easy to navigate our beautiful website, and find what they needed
• The website was mobile responsive, secure, and covered all bases for web design best practices

Measuring success requires a well-rounded approach: Real, practical feedback from your audience, and measuring data as well.

Success also comes in the form of hugs! We hugged to celebrate our beautiful website redesign as my client was extremely satisfied and happy, which is what I strive for! (We hugged along the process anyway!)

We’re not done! A website constantly evolves

My annual maintenance services cover:

• Updates, changes, optimizations, and backups, to ensure you’re fully secure, up to date, and optimized to modern website practices
• Managing and monitoring third-party accounts and platforms. I review and make minor adjustments using Google and Bing webmaster tools. They all help to build recommendations and improvements for your website’s SEO.
• Consultation and suggestions. I’m always available to speak to you about your needs. I reach out proactively to recommend what could help you and your business, and website

Whether this is for your business, or nonprofit organization, I’m here to help. Contact me today to discuss a project or if you have ideas for your own website redesign!