The Incredible Principles of Website Rebranding

The Incredible Principles of Website Rebranding

Website rebranding certainly isn’t an admission that your brand has failed. In fact, it’s more of an awareness that your brand is keeping pace with changes around it.

Sure, your site may be keeping nice figures, but its growth may have become stagnant.

This is where rebranding comes to the fore and pushes your site even further.

Benefits of Rebranding

First of all let’s have a look at the benefits of rebranding.

• Stimulate New Growth

When you first launched your site it was likely pretty damn amazing, but that was five years ago. Consumers’ tastes change quickly, so you may well be preaching to a declining crowd.

An amazing rebrand, however, can mean that you’ve got your finger on the pulse of what consumers want and need. This high impact move will give you an edge over rivals and open up new streams of traffic.

• Expand Your Market

You know what, building cool templates for MySpace profiles was a great idea in 2006, but I’m guessing it’s not so lucrative now…

Rebranding is a great chance to expand your services and explore new markets. Perhaps it’s time to move into building Tumblr and Pinterest templates.

Remember: evolution is the key in any business and your rivals are well aware of this!

• Increased Authority

A good rebrand will mark you out as an innovative site. By keeping track of changes in the online world you’re showing that you’re not going to fall behind.

People love to follow a good leader, so instilling this authority in your site is a vital move. Likewise, increased authority will boost your SEO efforts and help you get back to the top of SERP.

When Should You Rebrand?

Those benefits are pretty tempting, so it’s time to decide if you need to rebrand.

Ask yourself these questions:

• Has there been a long term decline or plateau in traffic and revenue?
• Has your market moved on with new innovations and technology?
• Does your brand name now sound out of date?

If you answer yes to any of these then it’s time to consider a rebrand. If you answer all three then YOU NEED TO REBRAND!

Let’s Get Started with Rebranding!

There are certain key areas that you need to address when starting a rebrand program, so make sure you pay attention to the following:

• Choose a New Brand Name

Say you started off selling nothing but jeans on your site and named it denimforever.com

It says exactly what your site sells, but perhaps you found that selling footwear and knitwear made for a nice sideline. Consumers, though, will see your site name and think it does exactly what it does on the tin – sell denim!

As a result they will head elsewhere in search of that snazzy jumper and loafers combination.

However, rebranding your company name to allclothes.com shows that your range isn’t so limited and will pull in the customers you want.

With a new brand name come a couple of areas that also need changing:

1. Logo – Your old logo will be redundant, so get to work designing a new one or visit a logo creator such as DesignPax or 99Designs
2. Social Media – Update your social media accounts to reflect your new name, but check each platform for the most effective way to do this. Also, announce the rebranding on each platform, so people don’t get a shock when they next visit you.

• Redirect Your Domain, but Don’t Lose Your Ranking

The biggest fear for all site owners is that by changing your domain you’re going to fall down the search rankings.

Thankfully, you don’t need to go back to the very start with your SEO efforts. Instead, you just need to incorporate a simple piece of code known as a 301 redirect.

This will preserve the authority of your domain and consolidate the ranking of your old site into the new one.

Get started by doing an audit of your site to ensure you redirect all pages and any internal links.

And don’t forget to test heavily before relaunching. You don’t want to send traffic into the ether!

• Whet Consumers’ Appetite with a Taster

A great way to raise the profile of your new brand is with a ‘Coming Soon!’ page. On here you can briefly detail the changes that are coming and advise a launch date.

Build a few links to this page and you’ll find yourself getting a useful head start on the indexing process.

• Build a Promotion Strategy

You want the world and their dog to know about your new site, so create a buzz with a promotional campaign.

Use your mailing list to target your core customers and let them know of the coming changes. Not only does this keep them in the loop it can also address any worries they may have.

A good way to promote the new site is with an event, so explore ideas such as “10% of all orders on launch day”, “$20 voucher to the first 50 customers” etc. These will drum up interest and also maximize conversion rates.

Contact affiliates and advise them of the rebranding. Not only will they want to update their information, they may help publicize the rebranding.

• Don’t Shut down That Old Domain Just Yet

The internet isn’t quite perfect yet, so it’s difficult to confirm exactly when the domain name swapover will happen. It could be 72 hours, it could be over a week due to technical issues.

Now, the last thing you want is for your site to be down for even a few hours. Therefore, make sure your old site is still available on its IP address for up to 10 days.

This way your bases are covered in the event of a server going into meltdown. Once your new domain is up, though, feel free to hit the ‘kill’ switch straight away.

• Monitor That Relaunch

Even the most thorough relaunch strategy will encounter issues once it goes live, so don’t panic!

Carry out thorough testing once it’s live to keep an eye on traffic and your site ranking. Any anomalies should be thoroughly investigated to eradicate any bugs.

If you’re seriously concerned about troubleshooting then you may want to consider launching a beta version for the public to test. The feedback you receive will be invaluable for when you tackle the full relaunch.

Final Thoughts

Our guide has shown that, although some hard work is needed, a rebrand is not as daunting as it first sounds.

A successful rebrand will optimize your site and refresh it’s image in the eyes of consumers. And this will maximize your conversion rates and revenue.