5 Tell-tale Signs It’s Time for A Website Redesign
You don’t want your website to be like a mouldy piece of food forgotten about in a Tupperware container at the back of your fridge. Gross, we know. But that’s the point. Your website is the virtual face of your business, and it ought to reflect what it is you do. It should temptingly feed your customers the knowledge they’re looking for and cause them to follow through on your calls to action. You want them to stay, not go away because they’re put off by a bad user experience or an outdated look.
With search engine algorithms updating to factor in things like web design and usability in their rankings, it matters now more than ever that your website is up-to-date and not just rotting away. You want to reach your customers for leads, conversions, clicks and sales and to do this; you’ll want to make sure that the web experience they’re getting is up to speed with the times. Identifying whether or not your site is in need of a total overhaul or just updates can be tricky, but there are a few tell-tale signs to point you in the right direction. Here are five signs indicating it’s time for a website redesign:
If it takes an IT person or a phone call to your web developer to get a comma removed or wording edited on your current website, then it’s time for a website redesign. Content Management Systems (CMS) have come a long way and empower even non-techies with the ability to add, edit and maintain content on their own website. Not having a user-friendly website that lets you access the backend of your site comfortably is a key indicator that you need an architectural overhaul.
If when you go to load your website, you instinctively go and make a coffee so you don’t have to sit there waiting for it to load – then it’s time for a website redesign. Page speed is a key factor in retaining your web visitors, as nearly 50% of people surveyed expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less. 40% of web visitors will abandon websites that take more than 3 seconds to load. This has huge implications for your bottom line. If your potential customers are jumping ship from your site to a competitor's site because they don’t want to wait, you’re the one left marooned and missing out on a transaction. Don’t get left behind.
Another thing to note is Google cares about your site speed too. They have explicitly stated that they use page speed loading times as one of the signals within their algorithm to rank pages. That means, the slower you are, chances are the more buried you are in search results, and that’s no good. A proper website redesign will quicken things up for your web visitors, which ultimately makes them happier, and that’s the point of good business.
You’ve probably heard this before, but the importance of it cannot be stressed enough. If your current web design is not mobile responsive – you need to fix this ASAP. It has been repeatedly reported that more people are searching for things on their mobile devices than on desktops. With this in mind, how do you expect your website to be successful among consumers if they can’t access it on the device of their choosing? Responsive web design allows your web visitors to have a user-friendly experience on their smartphones, tablets or desktops in both portrait and landscape modes. Again, Google also cares if your website is responsive – using this as a signal in their algorithm when it comes to ranking mobile web pages.
When web visitors get to your website, they want to find what they're looking for quickly and without too much digging. When your valuable information is buried because of poor content structure, chances are it’s not being read because it's too hard to find. We’ve already mentioned that people searching the web get impatient when things take too long to load; this includes when things take too long to find. By having your website redesigned with a focus on simplicity and ease of use, you have the opportunity to trim the fat and put forward what matters most for your business.
First impressions are huge, and when a visitor comes to your site and sees an outdated look, it diminishes your authority and can cause users to leave your site altogether. We gravitate towards pretty things, and your website is no different. Like mullets, backcombing, and hypercolour shirts – your website should NOT reflect an earlier time than the present. Your web design should present your current business in all its glory, and if a website redesign is needed to do this, then get to it!
At Blue Ocean Interactive Media, we make some pretty killer sites. Contact us today to learn more!
