You’re in business to make money, so spending your hard-earned cash on a website refresh can be difficult to swallow. But the fact is, if you delay for too long and your website stops converting and starts scaring away customers, waiting could cost you a lot more than updating.
With that in mind, here are four signs your website needs updating now, and a few expert tips to help you make sure your new website boosts your bottom line.
1. Your Design & Copy Are Outdated
As a rule of thumb, we recommend reviewing your website’s design every 3-5 years and your copy every 1-2 years. Why? An outdated site design can reflect badly on your business, and turn customers away instead of attracting them, while old copy can confuse or turn off customers.
You may want to update your site more or less often depending on how competitive your industry is. If you’re operating in a crowded market, it’s even more important to have an up-to-date, high-conversion site. Consider a website redesign from a reputable company for a professional overhaul.
2. The User Experience Isn’t up to Scratch
They say the average website visitor will leave if your site doesn’t load in three seconds. But we know for a fact users will leave your site at any point if it’s glitchy or difficult to navigate, and this will ultimately lead to lost revenue. That’s why UX or user experience should always be top of mind.
A website redesign and UX update will help enhance brand perception and drive results. Ultimately, if your website is easier to navigate users are far more likely to find the information that they need to make a purchase or an enquiry.
3. Your Brand Has Changed
Your website should be a reflection of your business. If your brand has changed or you’ve completed a rebrand, it’s important to quickly update your website to reflect the change to avoid confusing customers. In most cases, it is best to get started with a website redesign as soon as your new branding is decided on to make the transition seamless (and to avoid having to take your website down or keep an outdated website up after the rebrand). After you’ve updated your website it’s important to make sure customers don’t get confused by the rebrand, especially if the company’s name has changed.
4. The Website Isn’t Functioning Seamlessly
Over time outdated websites will stop working. For example, navigation may slow down, animations might stop working, and text may not display correctly. This can be due to a number of reasons, from outdated coding and plugins to poor website hosting. This is a sign you might need a website revamp or even a website overhaul.
Most of these problems can be fixed or avoided by regularly maintaining and updating your website.
How to Get Your Website Redesign Right
It’s best to do any job once, and do it right, especially your business’s website. Here are a few tips to make sure you do:
- Investigate what brings people to your site and where they land
Dive into your website’s analytics to find out what’s working and what’s not. Where are your visitors coming from and what are they looking for once they reach your site? Who are your site’s visitors? Finding these things out will make it much easier to optimise and improve your site during the website redesign.
- Think about what actions you want users to take
Your website exists to prompt visitors into taking some action, whether that’s to make a purchase, download a resource, or get in touch. Before you start redesigning your website you should be 100% clear on what that action should be and why. This should inform the entire redesign, especially if you’re planning an e-commerce website redesign.
- Clean up your site’s SEO
A redesign is the perfect time to clean up your site’s SEO to make sure you’re ranking. Use the right keywords in URLs, H1s, and key pages. Clean up any duplicate or old content and add new optimised copy. Make sure your site is accessible so all users can access it (this will also help with your SEO efforts).
- Find the right expertise
Most businesses don’t have the capability to carry out a full website redesign in-house, which means you’ll need to hire help. When you do, it’s a good idea to get a few quotes, communicate what you want to achieve clearly, and agree in advance on firm timelines and prices. Usually, it’s easiest if you can find one website redesign agency that can do it all, rather than finding and managing multiple contractors.
Get Your Website Redesign Started Today
Ready to start your website redesign or seeking a professional opinion on whether you need one? Contact BeOnTop Digital Marketing for a free, no-obligation quote and initial consultation.
