You should do a site re-launch every two to three years. Hot Banana's general manager provides this guide for doing it right.

First things first: Should you re-launch? And the answer is yes, generally at least every two to three years. It's never been more important to make sure your site's structure, layout, content and technologies are up-to-date, optimized and following the latest best practices.

For one thing, browsers, design and coding standards continue to evolve; if you're still using coding from two years ago, that might negatively affect how your site is ranked by search engines and rendered by web browsers. 

But getting traffic is just the beginning. Your site's content takes over from there, and making sure it's optimized will help you turn more visitors into customers. 

Overhauling a site doesn't have to be daunting. Here are some things to consider:

1) Strategy
Identify your business goals. What do you need your site to do: inform, build your brand, funnel leads to your sales staff? And how will you measure success? Design your site accordingly.

2) Website ownership
Determine which department is responsible for the site. Ideally, marketing is in charge. This way, it's in the hands of those who rely on it the most. 

3) Phases & funding
Obviously you can't do everything at once, so work in phases. If the site hasn't been changed in a while, brand updates might take precedence. If your goal is to generate more leads, start with optimizing content for keywords. The bottom line: Choose priorities based on business goals. 

When creating a budget, keep in mind that maintenance is an ongoing process. You'll continually require resources to update landing pages, content, design and more. 

4) Select a web partner.
You'll need outside expertise, unless you happen to have in-house specialists for branding, design, tech infrastructure, SEO, ecommerce, security, hosting, cross-browser compatibility… whew! Look for a company with proven success, and possibly one that specializes in your sector. 

5) Content management
Determine the who, when and how of managing content. Select a web content management system (CMS) that makes it easy for even non-technical people to add or change content in about 30 seconds. Yes, this is possible, and essential, considering the speed with which information travels online. The vendor must provide support during and after the launch, have a solid and future-looking product plan and offer templates designed according to best practices.

6) Content creation
Writing for the web should be clear and concise. Limit the amount of text per page, and sprinkle keywords throughout. Search engines will look at your page content, meta data, outbound links, header tags and URLs, so make them keyword-friendly. 

7) Usability and accessibility testing
Consider what your visitors will be looking for, and make sure it's easy to find. Use focus groups to test how people navigate your site. Also, test how your site renders on various devices and in text-only format. Make sure it's compliant with industry accessibility standards like W3C.

8) Technology infrastructure
Check that you have at least 99.9 percent uptime and data backups, and review your Service Level Agreement.

9) Landing pages
Design them to capitalize on leads generated from your marketing campaigns. Rather than sending people to your home page, greet them with content that increases the likelihood they'll take the action you want: subscribe to a newsletter, sign up for a webinar, download a white paper, et cetera.

10) Measure, measure, measure
Incorporate web analytics to track the number of visitors, where they're coming from, fluctuations in traffic, what visitors are doing on your site, where they're exiting and whether or not you were able to convert them to customers.

Keeping your site relevant is key to building your business. 

Krista LaRiviere is general manager and co-founder of Hot Banana, the web content management solution from J.L. Halsey. Read full bio.