On 1st Feb 2014, we launched a new website for FusionCharts after 7 months of intense work. And two months after launch, now that we are done fixing all the bugs and optimizing the important touchpoints, I thought it might be a good idea to share everything that went into the new website – right from the objectives we set for ourselves to the tech and design choices we made to the SEO and analytics strategy we implemented.
I am going to set the context by interviewing myself after which we will jump right into the slideshow having the detailed process.
(Sanket – interviewer): 7 months for a new website, huh? Don’t you have better things to do?
(Sanket – guest): No.
(Sanket – interviewer): Why don’t you have better things to do?
(Sanket – guest): Because the website is our main shop, so it’s very very important for us.
Interviewer: Ha! So why did you need a new website in the first place?
Guest: Because I felt like it.
Interviewer: Being cocky is my job.
Guest: Sorry.
Well, we needed a new website because there were a lot of pain points we had with the previous one and also because we wanted to build for the future.
The previous website we had had started looking old, wasn’t particularly fast, could not be SEO-d properly because of architecture limitations, and had also gotten clumsy with all the additions we made to it over time.
Also, we wanted to have a responsive website given that 10% of our visitors are from mobiles and tablets (and will only increase in the future), move to the LAMP stack (from IIS6), integrate a CMS into the website, build measurability into everything we have on the website and most of all, have a great experience across all touchpoints which in turn would improve our conversion rates.
Interviewer: Still doesn’t sound like a lot. Why did it take 7 months?
Guest: Yeah 7 months is a long time but we really wanted to get our website right this time. It has over 400 pages of content (or 1400 if you were to count our complete demos section), so it was a massive project. We also redid all our demos, which are very comprehensive themselves. And the biggest reason why it took so long is because we did all of it in-house with a 4-person team – me, 1 designer, 1 front-end developer and 1 back-end developer (excluding the demos which had a separate team).
Interviewer: You talk a lot.
Guest: Didn’t you call me here for that?
Interviewer: What was the process like?
Guest: And then you say I talk a lot.
We started right from setting the objectives, putting together what success would look like in the end, define the journey users would have on the website, get the information architecture in place, write content, design, develop and launch it. And of course, there are things like choosing the server hardware, incorporating the SEO strategy and building analytics into every action we wanted to measure. I have detailed all these steps in the slideshow below.
And even after we launched it, we are constantly optimizing and improving the experience on the website by looking at the data coming in and the feedback from our users.
Interviewer: So you are still not done, huh?
Guest: You could say that.
Interviewer: Are you happy with the results? Did you achieve everything you set out to achieve?
Guest: Wish I could say that.
Interviewer: So you wasted your time?
Guest: No, never said that. I would say we have achieved 70% of our objectives and are still working on the others – constantly experimenting, optimizing, keeping what works, documenting what doesn’t.
Interviewer: Not too bad then?
Guest: Yeah, not bad at all.
Interviewer: One last question. Do you like interviewing yourself?
Guest: Absolutely. I will do it again.
