7 Facebook Page Rebuild Tips: Construction, Facebook Page Design

This blog post is Part 3 of our Facebook Page Rebuild Series. Here we’ll offer some tips on constructing a staging page, as well as effectively communicating your goals for your Facebook Page design to your graphic design/IT team . We’ll also take a look at Optify’s process throughout our own Facebook Page rebuild.

Create a Staging Page

Don’t release your Facebook Page rebuild until all renovations are complete

• If your company plans to entirely redesign your Facebook Page rather than just make a few small repairs, only issue one official launch of your rebuild instead of revising piece-by-piece.
• Establishing an official launch date allows you to track and measure your success across the board, from pre-launch data to post-launch data for the months succeeding the launch.
• We have measured our current Facebook Page based on specific metrics (e.g. number of fans, traffic volume), using our Marketing Analytics Feature and Facebook’s Insights dashboard. We will compare this data to our post-launch numbers for our Page over the next few months.

Continue maintaining your current Facebook Page, but build an additional staging Page for the renovation process

• Making changes to your current Page instead of a test page is risky.
• So as to keep our renovation process hidden from public view, we researched whether Facebook offered a “Preview” option of changes to our existing Page, in which revisions would remain unpublished until we were prepared to go public.
• We found no such option on Facebook.
• Instead, we created a brand new, public Page with a nonspecific title and no mention of Optify, in order to keep the public Page under wraps until our launch.
• Come official launch time, we will transfer data from our staging Page to our existing Page.

Assign admins to your Facebook Page’s test site

• Facebook Pages allow for multiple admins, so you can easily make all members of your project admins of the staging Page.
• Optify made everyone on the Facebook Rebuild project a staging Page admin, including members of our marketing team, graphic designers and Web developers.

Test out Facebook applications on your staging Page, not publicly

• The social network allows Pages to run various third-party applications, as well as Facebook’s own. It’s important to test each one before deciding whether to incorporate it into your final rebuild.
• Your current fans will have full visibility to these repairs and this may cause confusion, or even drive fans away if your implementation of Facebook applications and other new features don’t work.
• Optify researched countless Facebook applications through user forums and blog posts, but trial and error testing proved to be the most effective assessment.
• Many Facebook applications Optify initially considered contained bugs and/or were found to offer a few, but not all the features we desired.

Launch internally

• Since your staging Page is publicly accessible, it’s easy to share this link with the rest of your team.
• As you make your way through the rebuild process, ask your staff to check in and offer their own unique insights and fresh perspective regarding the Page.
• We sent our staging Page link to our entire team, so as to gather feedback from all of Optify’s teams (Sales, Development, Marketing).

Find Yourself a Skilled Graphic Design, IT Team

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Hire a team to assist with your Facebook Page design

• It’s essential that you have a designated team to assist with graphics and Web development for your Facebook Page design .
• While Facebook applications offer some automated, easy-to-use features, more complex and visually pleasing Page options require skilled professionals.
• Facebook applications provide the capacity for a customized Page, but the construction process is entirely on you. Make sure you find experienced individuals who are up to the task of building your Page from scratch.
• We were lucky enough to already have a graphic designer and Web developer on our team, yet our Facebook rebuild was truly novel, experimental for everyone onboard.
• We found it was essential to first research Facebook Page best practices, then to discuss our objectives and vision with our graphic design and IT team.

Research Facebook Page best practices and set your company goals, then delegate

• Once you’ve set your objectives for your Facebook Fan Page, build your Page according to those goals.
• For example, we reconstructed our Facebook Page design based on the following objectives: To increase Optify’s “Like” base, to elevate and drive traffic to Optify’s website, and to provide value to fans and prompt them to share.
• Look at what other brands and your competitors are doing for inspiration only after you’ve focused on your company’s own goals. Realize, not everyone’s core objectives are the same.
• Identify what each navigational tab and graphic on your Page aims to achieve before moving into the design stage.
• Even though you, the marketer, might not be a gifted artist doesn’t mean you can’t lay the foundation for your Page’s rebuild.
• At Optify, we sketched simple layouts that included just text and basic design in order to provide our graphic design/IT team with an idea of our vision for the Page.

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Join the Process

This is the third installment of Optify’s Facebook Page Rebuild Series. We hope that you’ll continue to follow our blog updates as we continue to document our Facebook Page’s progress. Share your thoughts with us.