Don’t Migrate. Redesign.

Redesign For Better

We believe in what Paul Boag is saying over here. If you’re doing a site redesign or getting a new domain, content migration shouldn’t even be a thought on your mind.

You’re better off writing new content than dragging your old content over.

It’s sort of like moving. When you move, do you take every single item you own? We know that whenever we move and redesign, we evaluate every item that we have and we take only what we need for our new house. We own a lot of items that might be good for our house now but won’t be good for our new house.

Believe in the Future

When you’re moving to a new site, think creatively about what the new space could look like. We encourage you to forget about the old– at least while you’re trying to actively create new content for your new site.  It doesn’t matter if you’ve been getting fewer and fewer visitors on your old site. It doesn’t matter if you have thousands of pages of content.

And it doesn’t matter if your web copy was working before. Your new site is a place for your new ideas, and you should make sure that you’re taking over only what is needed.

Re-envisioning Will Make You Stronger

You can review your analytics and make sure that you’re focusing on the pages that your prospective readers are actually going to visit. Take note of the pages that your readers enjoy, and focus your rewriting efforts on those pages.

• Check out the types of keywords your visitors search on your site
• Review your most popularly clicked on links
• Analyze the pages your visitors view most frequently

Is everyone searching for interviews? Do most people look directly for sales information and pricing pages? Take note of that information and make sure that your new site highlights that information first.

When you recreate instead of migrate information over, you can make room for new, exciting ideas to come through. And that excitement is worth bringing over to the new site.