I work with a lot of the fastest growing B2B companies out there. The #1 missed opportunity I see across the board is marketers not approaching website redesigns in a data-informed way.

Website redesigns are incredibly expensive. They eat up a lot of budget and time. And yet, many marketers don’t take advantage of their existing data to learn and test during the redesign process. I get it - marketers are very busy people. And your website is the “face” of your company. Sometimes you just need to get a makeover and start fresh.

But just as you wouldn’t go out and drop some serious cash on a designer dress or watch without first trying it on and weighing other options, you should be treating your website redesign as more than just a facelift. 

Think of your website redesign as an opportunity to improve how your website converts visitors into customers.

In my role leading the Growth Strategist team at Mutiny, I’ve seen hundreds of B2B websites and dozens of website redesigns. In this blog post, I will leverage that knowledge to guide you through the highest ROI experiences you should run before, during, and after your next redesign project.

In partnership with the M2 Community, we hosted an in-depth workshop covering the tactics and frameworks below. I also answered audience questions and shared real-life examples of how customers of Mutiny applied this on their own websites.

You can watch the whole workshop on demand.

Before Your Website Redesign

One of the most exciting times to do website analysis and optimization is immediately before you start wire framing for a website redesign.

This is a precious time where you have an idea of what you want out of your new site, but can still validate hypotheses or internal requests (aka what your CEO wants).

I especially recommend focusing on format, conversion path, and CTA testing during this time. The learnings that you gain will directly impact the design requirements you pass to your website redesign agency before wireframing. Here are some low hanging fruit suggestions on a/b tests to focus on.

1. Mobile Conversion Optimization

Most B2B websites have 30-50% of their traffic visiting on a mobile device. Unfortunately, mobile traffic typically converts 3x less than desktop.

But instead of letting that traffic go to waste, there are some simple tests you can run to validate how to improve your mobile experience on your new site.  Adding a “pinned” CTA to the bottom of the screen gives your mobile visitors a helpful experience (thumb fatigue, no more!), while simultaneously helping you validate a conversion path that could be used in the redesign. 

Check out this experience that Notion launched leveraging Mutiny banners to act as a “pinned” Sign Up CTA. This simple experience drove a 16% click-through-rate. Pretty good for mobile traffic that would have otherwise bounced.

2. Site Section Analysis and Site Navigation Tests

You’re likely considering a new or revamped site navigation during your redesign. And I’m willing to bet that there are a lot of strong opinions about what sections and links should be included in the navigation bar. 

That’s prime real estate, so before you make any decisions, first make sure you have some baseline data on what’s currently working (and what’s not).

Go into Google Analytics and do an analysis on the most popular sections of your current website. Do this by using GA Content Groupings or exporting the All Pages report to a spreadsheet, then “group” your pages to aggregate total traffic across each site nav section. For example, all pages with “/blog” in them should be categorized under your Blog or Resources section. You’ll be left with a high-level view of which sections of your site are currently getting the most traffic. 

After you do this analysis, here are some A/B tests to run:

• Re-order your site navigation based on what section is most popular. For example, if your “Pricing” page is most popular, but is currently all the way to the right on your site nav, try moving it to the first item on the left.

• Test out removing sections in the site nav altogether that are rarely visited. 

• If there is a popular section on the website that does not currently have a spot in your site navigation, try adding it. For example, add “Blog” into your site nav if you have a lot of blog traffic but do not currently have a permanent spot for the blog in your navigation.

• Do a card sorting exercise to determine alternative copy for your site nav section (I especially love to do an Open Card Sort, then A/B test the best section titles that emerge).

The navigation of your new site will have a huge impact on the conversion rate. Chameleon saw a 30% lift in conversion just by surfacing their most popular pages.

3. Conversion Funnel Dropoff

If you get one thing right on the new website, it should be your conversion paths. Take a look at your current site’s dropoff points – where are visitors entering, how many pages or fields do they need to fill in prior to converting? A/B test ways to smooth out the areas with the largest dropoff.

For example, let’s say you have a 3-step request demo form and you see in your analytics that you have a lot of dropoff after step 2. Use a redirect test to test a new conversion form that removes step 2.

You can also test ways to optimize your demo requests forms, such as adding sections for social proof or simply A/B testing the headline on this page to drive more conversion. When Contractbook changed the conversion path of their pricing page, they saw a 971% lift in conversions.

4. Scroll Depth on Key Landing Pages

If you don’t have scroll depth tracked already in Google Analytics, take 5 minutes to set it up (instructions here). A week later, go into GA’s Top Events report and take a look at how far visitors are scrolling on top landing pages, like your homepage.

If you don’t have time to do this, no worries. I would bet most of your website visitors are not scrolling past the 25% mark on most pages of your website.

Take a look at your homepage to start: what critical info do you have below the 25% mark on the page? Test re-ordering the page to move those sections higher up. You can also test adding modals, such as exit intent modals, onto long-scroll pages to capture conversions.

5. Call To Actions

Ah, the age-old debate. Should you have one or two CTAs on your pages? A/B test it prior to your redesign and do what works best for your visitors. Depending on the mix of your traffic (e.g. if you have a lot of first time visitors, for instance), two CTAs might work better on your website.

Navattic gave their visitors the option for a visitor to attend a live demo, or click around a virtual demo. This test gave them a 450% lift in conversions.

During Your Website Redesign

Let’s face it. When you’re in the thick of your website redesign you probably don’t have time for… anything else.

While your team is working on wireframing, you will soon need to start planning out the content (both copy and imagery) to use on the new site. You likely have a lot of ideas of your own (and others) to guide you. Add data to that mix by A/B testing new messaging and imagery on your current site.

Here are some low energy, high impact ideas:

1. Test Messaging... Everywhere

Run a multi-variation test for 5 new headlines and subheadlines you’re considering for all of your top landing pages. Attentive was able to get a 77% lift in conversion when they re-worked the headers to match the ad copy on all their most popular landing pages. 

I'd also recommend testing different CTAs (e.g. Request Demo, Talk to Sales, Get Started, etc.) Sprig saw a 95% lift in conversions when they swapped the CTA button based on the company size of the visitor.

2. Test Different Imagery

Depending on your audience, practical imagery (e.g. screenshots of your product) might convert better than inspirational imagery (e.g. a photo or drawing of the personas you serve). To answer this question, swap out the current image on your top website landing page and a/b test it against the original.

For example, AlphaSense added a screenshot inside their product to their demo request page and saw a 73% lift in conversions just from that simple change.

After Your Website Redesign

Congrats, you did it! Your new website is live and the champagne bottles have been popped. Enjoy a glass of that well-deserved bubbly while it lasts, because your work is not over.

New websites are never launched perfectly, no matter how hard you try. You’ll need to monitor performance metrics (e.g. site load time, conversion rate, ) closely and compare them to the benchmarks from your old site to ensure you’re trending in the right direction.

Here are some helpful things to do if the metrics aren’t what you had hoped for:

1. Take a Peek Into What Your Visitors Are Doing

Use something like Hotjar to watch some screen recordings of visitors on your site. Be on the lookout for points of confusion or unexpected bounces.

2. Test Your Homepage Messaging

Test Homepage messaging. Yes, again. Now that the new site is live, test different messaging options again to ensure you’ve selected the highest converting copy.

3. Segment Your Site Visitors

Use personalization to make every page more relevant based on a visitor’s industry, company size, familiarity, buying stage, and more. 

At this point, speed is the name of the game. We've put together a framework that you can follow to launch over 30 experiments in 30 days.

The Bottom Line

Website redesigns are the perfect opportunity to lean into your data and optimization programs. Although these projects are very time consuming (and, let’s face it – stressful), they have the potential to make a huge impact on all of your marketing programs and your company brand.

With every marketing channel leading to the website, you can’t afford to do a redesign without data validating you every step of the way.

Check out the full workshop to go deeper on each of these steps and hear more examples.

Watch the workshop here.