I can’t count the number of Website redesigns that I have been involved with over the years, but I find them to be a little like renovations to a house: the process can be painful but when you are done, the results can be spectacular.
We just passed the one year anniversary of the launch of new website for one of our clients, Wilton.  Wilton is a leader in cake and dessert decorating, cookie making and celebrations, and throughout its 80-year-history, one of Wilton’s primary goals has been to educate and inspire dessert decorators of all skill levels.  The company’s Web site, Wilton.com, has played an important role by offering a vast collection of decorating ideas, recipes and techniques.
This website redesign had a number of challenges (thousands of pages of content that needed to be reorganized, integrating new functionality, etc.) but the redesign was critical to the success of the online marketing plan we developed for Wilton.
Quite honestly, the results surpassed our expectations – we have seen significant improvements in almost every key metric that we track, including the following:
- 190 percent increase in the volume of projects and recipes viewed by Wilton consumers
- 35 percent increase in total number of Web site visits
- 50 percent growth in returning visitors
- 20 percent improvement in product views
- 32 percent increase in the number of new visitors
- 82 percent growth in the number of searches for local Wilton Method classes
- 35 percent decrease in search results page abandonment
- 20 percent increase in estimated Web site driven revenue
One of the reasons why I think we achieved the results we did is that everything was tied to an online marketing goal or objective and those were connected to the overall business strategy. Â In other words, we justified everything we did by showing how it was going to positively impact the bottom line. Â I can’t say that all web redesigns will provide the results that Wilton’s did, but it does serve as yet one more example of how well a new website can pay-off.
