Before you take the plunge, take my website redesign color test at http://bit.ly/Wn1tk  then come back and check out my quick checklist given below:

1.    Honest Frisking : Check what you have got in your existing site. Hear it from your key stakeholders.

2.    Forget Committees : Don’t get caught in the usual brainstorming committees. Form a key website team with marketing, sales, tech and decision makers. Get out of meeting rooms and get in fresh ideas. Do fewer meetings, less coffee and more output.

3.    Why do your visitors visit : Might seem obvious. Get honest answers and you might be surprised. Hint – try users!

4.    Forget flashy flash : What do you want your visitors to remember about your new site? Is it the eye popping flash in the home page or fresh content or useful resource?

5.    Spy Competitors’ sites : What are some of the optimized keywords that the competition is using? What have they done that makes them the blue-eyed girl of the search engines?

6.    Liken your site to a Cardiac Specialist :  We trust specialist doctors, don’t we? They assure you with their professional expertise.  Likewise, a good site puts customers first, offers what is required at a time when they require intuitively. Fresh content to good design to easy forms to warm automated reply help build trust and credibility.

7.    Testimonials work :  Yes, but customer testimonials by reputed names and organizations work better.

8.    Get Analytical : Are you getting the identified target groups reading the important pages for reasonable time? Importantly, are they coming back? Reputed web analytics tools will help you find out the bottlenecks and problem heads.

9.    Web 2.0 Generation : They want it quick and simple. Forget the old rules and thinking. Do you have enough conversation starters? Conversation boosters?

10. Web Speed still belongs to Stone Age : The above audience will not wait for a site to load. So resize your pictures, graphics and animation. Better still, eliminate them if they are not simplifying your business concepts or starting conversations with the audience.

11. Do you have Men in Blue or Orange or Red : In the market, you either have technology heavyweights or design gymnasts. It is rare to find a team that is led by internet marketing specialist who are flexible enough to work with either their tech and design people or yours.

Aside: If you like the Website Redesign Colour Test ( http://bit.ly/Wn1tk ) and you would like to pass it on to your internal team members for them to try it out, write a mail to me for a copy of the presentation.