We have just begun web work for Crystal Divers in Sanur, on the east coast of Bali. This is not a new business looking for its first website. It is an established dive centre with a recognized name, many returning guests and a website that has been online for years. That site performs poorly in some areas and very well in others.
The second point is the main risk in any redesign. An older site that looks dated can still be what brings in the bookings. Rebuilding it without analysis can eliminate that performance in a single weekend.
Our experience, dating back to agency work in Vancouver, has shown this problem often enough that we now begin every rebuild the same way: methodically, with a spreadsheet.
Why does an established business need an audit before a website redesign?
A new business has nothing to lose online. An established business has a history: pages that Google trusts, links from blogs and dive forums written years ago, and older guides that people have bookmarked and still send to friends before a trip. None of this is visible on the homepage, so it has to be identified deliberately.
The first task is therefore analytical. Before any discussion of colours or sliders (sliders are currently in high demand), we need to know which pages actually attract visitors and which of those visitors go on to request a booking. This requires a few afternoons with Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools to compile a list.
The list usually reveals something the owner did not know: an older course page steadily attracting visitors from Europe, or a dive site description ranking for a search nobody had considered. Sometimes, the page the team values most receives almost no visits.
What does the audit include?
- Every URL on the old site, including pages that were removed from the menu long ago and have been forgotten.
- Visits per page over the last twelve months, and their sources.
- The pages that led to an enquiry or to the booking form.
- Links from other sites, and the page each one points to. Webmaster Tools displays a large share of these.
- An approximation of the searches each important page ranks for. Since late 2011, Google has hidden a growing number of search terms behind "(not provided)", so this step involves informed estimation.
This spreadsheet is not the most visible part of the project, but it is the most useful afternoon of the entire process.
Should you keep your URLs or redirect them?
Keep them where possible; otherwise, give each one a 301 redirect. This is where most redesigns fail.
The new site is built on a new structure. Pages are renamed, merged or moved into folders that seem more logical to the designer. On launch day, every old address returns a 404 error. Google finds broken pages where valid ones used to be. The links that other sites provided over the years lead nowhere. Traffic declines, and a few weeks later someone asks why the phone has gone quiet.
The solution is straightforward. If a page keeps its address, it is left as is. If it moves, it receives a 301 redirect from the old address to the closest new page, one page at a time. Redirecting everything to the homepage, as hurried migrations do, is not an adequate solution. A redirect to an unrelated page is barely better than a 404 for the visitor, and in our assessment likely for Google as well.
The working tool is a redirect map: the old URL in one column, the new URL in the next, and a note when a page is merged or permanently removed. On WordPress, the map becomes a plugin setting or a few lines in the .htaccess file. After launch, each old URL on the list is tested individually. The test is repeated a month later, because some errors are invariably missed the first time.
The process is tedious, but it costs far less than losing a season.
Why does a dive centre need pages for future professionals?
Crystal Divers trains instructors, and a dive centre offering PADI instructor courses serves two very different audiences. One is the holidaymaker who wants a fun dive on Thursday. The other is the person considering leaving a job at home to become an instructor.
These two audiences read in very different ways. The tourist skims for price, schedule and photos, then books. The future professional reads everything, often more than once, over weeks or months: who leads the course, how the exam works, what happens afterwards, the full cost, and where they will stay for a month. It is a career decision, and they approach it as one.
Most dive websites present the Instructor Development Course as one more line on the courses page. In our view, this is a missed opportunity. These candidates are among the most engaged readers a dive centre will ever have, and they arrive with long, specific searches that most competitors do not address.
An established IDC centre therefore needs a dedicated section for professionals, covering the path from Divemaster to Instructor, the dates and transparent details. We are currently progressing through the PADI instructor levels through a sponsorship program run with PADI Asia Pacific, and therefore know these questions from the candidate's perspective. That knowledge is more valuable than any keyword tool.
What should be monitored after launch?
A redesign is not complete on launch day. For the first two months, we will review crawl errors in Webmaster Tools every week, since this is where missed redirects appear first. In Analytics, we will compare the performance of the pages that previously attracted visitors with their current results. A sharp drop on a page indicates a problem, and in nine cases out of ten, the cause is the redirect.
We are also monitoring mobile use. A growing number of people research dive centres on a phone, from a hotel room or an airport gate. Whatever we build must work on that screen first. We observe that this share is rising steadily, and we recommend planning for it.
If your business has an older website, it may be performing better than you think. We recommend a thorough SEO audit before any design work begins, and ensuring that whoever handles the website redesign provides you with the redirect map, not only a new homepage.
The dive centre discussed here can be found at crystal-divers.com for those who wish to follow the project. Every website worth keeping is eventually rebuilt, and each new version should preserve the path back to the previous one.