Website Renewal Process: Analysis, Problem Definition, Design

This section reveals the structural factors that cause renewal projects to fail and the recognition gaps between stakeholders behind them.

Director A at a production company received a consultation: "Our site looks outdated, so we want to renew it." Following the client's request, they delivered a completely redesigned site. However, three months later, the client complained that "the expected results aren't materializing." Additional modifications were required, and the project ended up in the red.

Such failures in website renewal processes are not uncommon. According to a 2023 survey by Internet Initiative Inc., approximately 60% of renewal projects responded that they "failed to achieve expected results."

The root cause of failure lies in starting work while the purpose of the renewal remains unclear. In many cases, clients begin with superficial requests like "wanting to make it look newer" or "wanting a site like our competitors." Meanwhile, contractors also get caught up in the term "design renewal" and focus on visual improvements.

However, websites are tools for achieving corporate business objectives. Without clear business goals such as "increasing sales," "increasing inquiries," or "strengthening recruitment," even the most beautiful design cannot deliver expected results.

Recognition gaps between project stakeholders also pose significant problems. Clients tend to think "it should be easy to do," while contractors face technical constraints and operational challenges. This temperature difference leads to specification changes and additional requests mid-project, ultimately deteriorating relationships between both parties.

Even more serious are cases where renewals proceed without conducting current situation analysis. Creating a new site without understanding why the current site isn't working well or which parts are problematic will only repeat the same problems.

This section demonstrates specific methods for discovering the true problems of current websites by combining quantitative and qualitative data.

The purpose of current situation analysis is to clarify situations that are intuitively felt to be "somehow not good" through objective data. While this stage is often undervalued in many website renewal procedures, it's actually a crucial process that holds the key to project success.

Quantitative Analysis: Identifying Problems with Numbers

Begin with basic numerical analysis using Google Analytics. The five important metrics are:

Traffic Trends: Check monthly visitor numbers over the past year. A downward trend may indicate declining search rankings or outdated content.

Traffic Source Analysis: Understand the proportions of search engines, social media, direct access, and referral sites. If search traffic is extremely low, there are likely SEO issues.

Page-by-Page Performance: Investigate which pages are frequently viewed and which have high exit rates. Pages with high exit rates likely have issues with content quality or usability.

Conversion Rate: Measure the achievement rate of target actions like inquiries or purchases. If significantly lower than industry averages, there are likely problems with site structure or UI.

Device-Based Access: Check usage proportions of PC, smartphone, and tablet. Many sites have insufficient mobile optimization despite high smartphone access.

For example, a B2B manufacturing company had smartphone access accounting for 70% of total traffic, yet their site wasn't optimized for smartphones. As a result, mobile exit rates reached 85%.

Qualitative Analysis: Gathering User Voices

To discover problems invisible through numbers alone, collect actual user opinions. Effective methods include:

Existing Customer Surveys: Ask current customers about "site usability," "ease of finding information," and "desired improvements." Keep questions concise to complete within 5 minutes to improve response rates.

Usability Testing: Observe people actually using the site. With about 5 participants, you can discover 80% of major problems.

Competitor Site Research: Compare with industry peers' sites to evaluate functionality and content richness. Particularly identify attractive elements missing from your own site.

Internal Stakeholder Interviews: Gather information from sales staff, customer support, and management about "frequently asked customer questions" and "complaints about the site."

Data Integration and Problem Structure

Integrate collected data to understand the overall problem picture. An effective organization method is classifying problems into four areas:

Technical Problems: Page loading speed, smartphone compatibility, search engine optimization, and other technical challenges.

Content Problems: Outdated information, insufficient content, unclear expressions, and other content-related challenges.

Design/UI Problems: Outdated appearance, difficult navigation, hard-to-read fonts, and other user interface challenges.

Strategic Problems: Unclear target setting, insufficient differentiation from competitors, misalignment with business objectives, and other fundamental directional challenges.

This classification clarifies the priority of issues to be resolved through renewal.

This section explains how to identify the core issues that should be prioritized for resolution in the renewal from multiple problems discovered through current situation analysis, and how to build consensus among stakeholders.

Current situation analysis typically reveals more than 10 problems. However, solving all of them within limited budget and timeframe is impossible. This is where prioritizing issues becomes crucial.

Business Impact Assessment

Evaluate each issue on two axes: "impact on business" and "difficulty of resolution." This method, called the "Impact-Effort Matrix," is frequently used by strategic consulting companies.

Impact Assessment Criteria:

• High: Problems directly affecting sales or inquiries (low conversion rates, poor usability of main product pages, etc.)
• Medium: Problems affecting brand image or user satisfaction (outdated design, difficulty finding information, etc.)
• Low: Problems affecting only some users (display issues on specific browsers, insufficient content on minor pages, etc.)

Difficulty Assessment Criteria:

• Low: Technically simple and quickly resolvable (text corrections, image replacements, etc.)
• Medium: Requires specialized technology or certain effort (responsive design, SEO measures, etc.)
• High: Requires system renewal or major design changes (CMS changes, fundamental site structure review, etc.)

For example, a real estate company case resulted in the following priorities:

Highest Priority (High Impact, Low Difficulty):

• Property search function improvement (reduce current 40% exit rate to 20%)
• Contact form simplification (reduce input fields from 15 to 5)

Priority (High Impact, Medium Difficulty):

• Strengthen smartphone compatibility
• Improve page loading speed

Deferred (Low Impact, High Difficulty):

• Complete management system renewal
• Multi-language support

Problem-Solving Hypothesis Setting

For high-priority issues, establish hypotheses about "why these problems occur" and "what results can be expected from solutions."

In hypothesis setting, establish specific numerical targets whenever possible. Vague expressions like "make it user-friendly" or "make it beautiful" don't allow completion judgment.

Good Hypothesis Example: "Too many filtering conditions in property search cause users to give up midway. By limiting to essential conditions, we'll improve search completion rates from current 60% to 80%"

Poor Hypothesis Example: "Make search functionality user-friendly and improve user satisfaction"

Building Consensus Among Stakeholders

Gain consensus from all project stakeholders regarding issue priorities and resolution hypotheses. The key at this stage is clearly demonstrating the rationale for "why prioritize these issues."

Client-Side Consensus Points:

• Management: Clear return on investment
• Field staff: Realistic workload estimates
• Other departments: Impact of renewal on their operations

Contractor-Side Consensus Points:

• Project manager: Schedule and budget validity
• Designers/engineers: Technical feasibility
• Director: Quality standard setting

In consensus building, documentation in the form of a "Problem Definition Document" is crucial. Verbal agreements have high potential for later troubles. The problem definition document should include:

• List of issues to be resolved with priorities
• Current and target numbers for each issue
• General direction of solutions
• Success measurement methods
• Project constraints (budget, timeframe, human resources)

This section shows practical procedures for translating problem-solving ideas into actually producible technical requirements, design requirements, and operational requirements.

Once problem definition clarifies "what to solve," the next step is specifically designing "how to solve it." The key at this stage is translating abstract ideas into implementable forms.

Detailed Functional Requirements

First, identify functions necessary for problem-solving and define detailed specifications for each.

For example, the challenge of "increasing inquiries" can be broken down into the following functional requirements:

Contact Form Improvement:

• Input fields: Limited to 5 items - company name, contact person name, email address, phone number, inquiry content
• Validation: Real-time error checking (email format, required fields, etc.)
• Confirmation screen: One-click submission completion after confirming input content
• Auto-reply: Immediate delivery of receipt confirmation email upon completion
• Administrator notification: Slack notification to staff when new inquiries arrive

CTA Button Optimization:

• Placement: Three locations - first view of each page, below articles, sidebar
• Design: Orange color, 5px rounded corners, shadowed, shrinks to 0.9x on hover
• Text: "Free Consultation Here" (more specific than "Contact Us")
• Size: 200px×50px on PC, 280px×60px on smartphone

Technical Requirements Setting

Determine technical specifications to realize functional requirements. At this stage, make realistic choices considering current system environment and budget constraints.

CMS (Content Management System) Selection: Choose based on update frequency and operator skill level. For several updates per month by non-technical staff, WordPress is suitable. However, for daily large-volume content updates by multiple people, more advanced CMS is needed.

Responsive Design Implementation Policy: Adopt mobile-first design with three breakpoints: smartphone (375px), tablet (768px), PC (1200px). Automatically deliver optimized image sizes for each device.

Page Speed Optimization: Set targets of PageSpeed Insights score above 85 on mobile and first view display time under 2 seconds. Implement image compression, CSS/JavaScript compression, and CDN usage to achieve this.

Design Requirements Development

Define specific visual requirements. Since design tends to be subjective, establish objective standards whenever possible.

Color Palette: Base on corporate brand colors, clearly defining main color, accent color, background color, and text color. For example, B2B companies emphasizing trustworthiness might use navy blue (#1e3a8a) as main color and orange (#f97316) as accent color.

Typography: Prioritize readability, using font sizes of 16px or larger for body text. Set heading sizes hierarchically for clear structure: H1 (32px), H2 (24px), H3 (20px).

Spacing and Layout: Ensure adequate spacing between content for information visibility. For PC, adopt center-aligned layout with maximum width of 1200px and side margins.

Operational Requirements Clarification

Define requirements necessary for continuous operation after renewal. Neglecting this aspect means even well-made sites cannot be maintained.

Update Task Distribution: Clearly define who updates which content. For example: news updates by PR staff, product information updates by sales staff, technical information updates by development staff.

Update Frequency Setting: To maintain SEO effectiveness, target at least twice-monthly new content additions. Also conduct existing content reviews quarterly.

Effectiveness Measurement Methods: Create monthly reports with Google Analytics, checking access numbers, conversion rates, and popular page rankings. Predetermine improvement actions for when targets aren't met.

Requirements Definition Document Creation

Document all requirements as a "Requirements Definition Document." This document serves as work guidelines for the production phase and becomes important deliverables serving as acceptance criteria upon project completion.

Include the following items in the requirements definition document:

• Project overview and objectives
• Functional requirements list
• Technical requirements
• Design requirements
• Operational requirements
• Deliverables list
• Schedule
• Budget breakdown
• Acceptance criteria

Creating this document aligns contractor and client recognition, significantly reducing troubles in later processes.

This section organizes typical problems that tend to occur during renewal project progress and specific countermeasures to avoid them from both perspectives.

Analyzing many renewal failure cases reveals common patterns. Knowing these pitfalls in advance can significantly improve the probability of leading projects to success.

Typical Contractor-Side Pitfalls

Pitfall 1: Insufficient Explanation of Technical Constraints Cases where easy acceptance of "we can do it" results in technical constraints emerging during actual production, making initial promises impossible to fulfill. This especially occurs with CMS customization or integration with existing systems.

Countermeasure: Always conduct technical verification during requirements definition and confirm feasibility in advance. Include "verification needed" in effort estimates for unclear points.

Pitfall 2: Ambiguous Content Creation Responsibility Scope Cases where "client prepares content" agreements result in clients lacking content creation capability, ultimately forcing contractors to handle it without compensation.

Countermeasure: Clearly specify concrete content creation divisions in contracts. When clients prepare content, specify delivery formats (Word documents, image resolution, etc.) concretely.

Pitfall 3: Underestimating Revision Frequency Cases where ambiguous agreements like "minor revisions unlimited" result in repeated revision requests inflating effort. This especially occurs with design preference-related revisions.

Countermeasure: Clearly limit revision frequency to "up to 3 times" and preset additional fees for exceeding this limit.

Typical Client-Side Pitfalls

Pitfall 1: Inadequate Internal Coordination Cases where web managers proceed independently, resulting in objections from management or other departments mid-project, forcing major specification changes.

Countermeasure: Obtain formal approval from major internal stakeholders before project start. Consensus from budget execution authorities and final decision-makers is essential.

Pitfall 2: Insufficient Understanding of Current Systems Cases where current system constraints or operational rules aren't accurately communicated to contractors, causing later troubles. This especially problematic with security requirements or server environments.

Countermeasure: Organize current system specifications and manuals in advance for contractor sharing. When unclear points exist, hold meetings including system administrators.

Pitfall 3: Unclear Success Measurement Methods Cases where post-renewal success measurement methods aren't determined, leading to projects being deemed failures based on subjective judgments like "not as effective as expected."

Countermeasure: Set specific KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) at project start, determining measurement methods and evaluation timing.

Common Issues During Project Progress

Issue 1: Insufficient Communication Frequency Cases where monthly regular meetings alone provide insufficient information sharing, with problems becoming apparent too late for solutions.

Countermeasure: Establish weekly progress checks and daily information sharing systems via Slack etc. Share important decisions immediately and prioritize swift decision-making.

Issue 2: Loose Schedule Management Cases where vague management like "roughly completed around this time" results in missed deadlines. Delays especially common in content creation and approval processes.

Countermeasure: Use Gantt charts etc. to clarify tasks and responsible parties, conducting weekly progress management. Consider countermeasures for delays in advance.

Issue 3: Quality Standard Recognition Gaps Cases where "completion level" or "quality" standards differ between contractors and clients, resulting in major post-delivery revisions.

Countermeasure: Align recognition early through mid-production mockup confirmations and prototype creation. Concretely sharing completion images is crucial.

Regular Checkpoints as Prevention

To avoid these pitfalls, establish the following checkpoints during project progress:

Weekly Confirmation Items:

• Tasks progressing on schedule
• Delayed tasks and causes
• Next week's work plans
• Emerging issues and response policies

Monthly Confirmation Items:

• Overall schedule review
• Budget execution status
• Quality check results
• Stakeholder reporting

Important Decision Confirmation Items:

• Decision documentation
• Impact scope confirmation
• Complete stakeholder sharing
• Schedule/budget impact assessment

Renewal project success depends on carefully executing the three stages of current situation analysis, problem definition, and design. By accumulating objective judgments based on data rather than intuition or assumptions, expected results can be realized.

Contractors play the role of translating clients' vague requests into specific challenges and presenting implementable solutions. They're required to make proposals contributing to business goal achievement while leveraging technical expertise.

Clients bear responsibility for accurately understanding their current situation and clearly setting goals to be achieved through renewal. Internal consensus building and securing necessary resources are also important roles.

Regardless of position, start with current situation analysis of your present website. By beginning with actionable items like Google Analytics number checking, user survey implementation, and competitor research, you can take the first step toward success. Then, organizing discovered issues with priorities and sharing them among stakeholders becomes the foundation for project success.