Well-designed and user-friendly websites drive traffic and keep visitors engaged. But your website may be actually hurting you if it’s not living up to expectations. When is the last time you redesigned your website? If you can’t answer that it may be time to start thinking about it. It’s important to note that websites are fluid things. They should always be evolving to meet the needs of your business and your audience.
If you’ve been ignoring the signs it’s time to redesign your website, here’s the truth:
Before people make a purchase, subscribe to a newsletter or visit a restaurant, they do their due diligence and Google your business.
In fact, about 87% of shoppers do their product research before they make a purchase. Another important dynamic to consider is that the average human attention span has been reduced to about eight seconds (which is shorter than that of a goldfish), so you have to grab their interest quickly.
Visitors will land on your website and leave in a matter of seconds if:
- Your website doesn’t reflect the services you have to offer
- Visitors are unable to find what they’re looking for
- Your site is taking too long to load
That’s why your online presence is the heartbeat of your business. But you shouldn’t be proud of having any ol’ website; at the very least, your website should always be three things: easy to find, easy to navigate and easy on the eyes. If it’s not, then a website overhaul should be at the forefront of your mind.
Unsure if it’s time for a website redesign? This list should help.
1. Your Website is Visually Outdated
Your website is like a blind date: first impressions really matter. Truth is, a visitor is not going to click around your site or continue scrolling if they find it to be visually unappealing. If your website was made in the 90’s and it still looks like it, guess what? It’s time for a website redesign.
A visually outdated website shows that you are out of touch with current trends. More importantly, it shows that you don’t care. It’s hard to position yourself as a leader or an expert in a specific field with a website that dictates otherwise.
Also, you are most likely losing potential customers because they are confused and probably have no idea what it is your company offers. In his blog, “Social Triggers”, Derek Halpern presents a study from researchers that shows 94% of wary respondents attributed their uneasiness to the website’s design
Your website should be updated, the same way a retailer updates their storefront with what’s new, innovative and easy to digest.
If your website still requires a flash player, has long navigation menus or is completely cluttered with nonsense, it’s time to get your website redesigned as of yesterday.
Your Competitors Have Recently Redesigned
Is your competitor’s website making you jealous? If they’ve just launched a new, slick website, then they may look much more attractive than your site. This means you could be losing traffic and leads.
Thus, it makes sense that when they change, you should consider a revamp as well. Study what they have done, but don’t try to replicate it. You don’t need to look just like them, but they may be doing some things that are engaging for your target buyers.
Staying competitive is essential to your brand’s success, and much of it begins with a website that delivers on the promise of your brand.
2. Your Site is Text Heavy
Having a text-heavy site falls under the umbrella of an outdated site, but there’s so much to say about this we decided to give it its own section.
Here’s the thing: we live in a visual world. If your site has more words than images, icons or graphics, it’s time for a site redesign. No one and I mean no one wants to scroll through a site that’s text-heavy. Not only is it uneasy on the eyes, but it’s overwhelming. Whatever message you are trying to convey will most likely get lost, misread or unread because of the surplus of text.
Additionally, a text-heavy site is most likely blocking your visitors from finding your call to action buttons. What is it that you want them to do? Sign up to receive a free consultation? Download an Ebook? Whatever action you want your visitor to take, will take them three times as long to complete or they’ll abandon your site altogether. People have an average attention span of 8 seconds, you want to use the visitor’s first 8 seconds on your site, wisely.
3. It’s Difficult to Navigate
There are certain pages on your website that should always be easy to find. For example, what your company does (About Us), what your company offers (Products or Services) and who to contact when things go awry (Contact Us or Support). If these simple, yet important pages are difficult to find, that’s a red flag that your website is in serious need of an update.
Visitors want to quickly find whatever it is they are looking for. After all, they came to your site for a reason. If they are unable to locate the page, product or information they are searching for not only will they depart from your site, but chances are they’ll take their business to a competitor. They’ll return to the search engine results page they most likely found you from and click on the next best thing.
If your site is difficult to navigate, Google will also have difficulty crawling your site. Google relies on the structure and information of a certain page to determine how it fits into the purpose of the overall website. The easier it is for Google to find your site the better it is for your website to show up in relevant search queries.
How to Fix Poor User Experience
Maybe you have a really dynamic and optimized home page, but then supplementary pages are plain and don’t mesh. This creates a huge disconnect. Your audience may think they’re looking at two different sites. Consistency in the look, feel, and usability needs to be universal on your website. This could be leading to high bounce rates.
The fact is that if no one is sticking around to learn about your brand, then your website needs to be retooled.
4. Low Search Engine Rankings
Speaking of Google, Big G is the king of search engine. When people are looking for particular services or products, but don’t know who offers what they’re looking for, they turn to Google. As a business, you should strive to show up in the top results on the first page of the search engine results. About 95% of people who perform Google searches don’t click past the first page. That means, they find what they’re looking for immediately or can’t be bothered to search further.
If you have low search engine rankings, then it’s definitely time to start planning a website redesign. Initially, old web developers would cram a bunch of keywords into a website and on particular web pages, with hopes of ranking on Google. However, as Google often does, they caught on and began penalizing those types of websites.
Instead, Google encourages meaningful content that is relevant to users’ search queries. If your URL structures are broken or don’t relay what your content is about you are less likely to show up in the top search results. Inbound marketing is free, but you have to take advantage of it the right way.
5. You Can’t Update Content Easily
If you encounter severe difficulty with your backend system every time you want to add a page, update a picture, or insert new copy, then it will be impossible for you to keep up with your industry and audience needs. You should always be able to make quick changes to your website. You should always be able to make quick changes to your website. Whether that be edit an existing blog post, adding or deleting products or simply updating your Terms and Services.
It’s 2019, website changes should be easy and seamless. Instead, you need to build a new site on a content management system (CMS) that’s user-friendly and allows even the inexperienced to publish a new post or upload new images to your gallery.
As you move to a new CMS, you can also look for opportunities to redesign your site that encompasses a better user experience.
6. Low Conversions, High Bounce Rate
If visitors are coming to your site, but not fulfilling the action you want to them to complete, you’ve probably noticed a low conversion. Whether you operate an eCommerce site where your goal is to get consumers to make a purchase or an informational site where your goal is to get visitors to sign up to receive your exclusive content, you want your visitors to convert. If they’re not, it’s most likely because your site needs to be redesigned.
Users are either coming to your site and not being able to find what they’re looking for or your site is completely outdated that it’s a turn-off. Either way, low conversions and high bounce rates are detrimental to your business.
If visitors are spending more time on your site that’s an indicator that they are interested in what you have to offer. The longer they spend on your site, the more likely it is they are to convert or at least come back at a later date. Just because a visitor doesn’t convert, doesn’t mean it’s a loss. The fact they’ve spent a significant amount on your site has already raised brand awareness for the user. However, this can’t be achieved with an archaic site.
7. Slow Load Time
Time is of the essence. As we’ve mentioned, the human brain has an attention span of about 8 seconds. That means, once a visitor enters your site, regardless of the referral medium, you have 8 seconds to capture their attention. Whether you’re showing a special offer, a clear CTA or engaging content, those few seconds are crucial.
But, if none of your content loads, how long do you think the visitor is going to stay? Definitely not more than 8 seconds. They are more likely to hit the back button and try again with a different website. In fact, a good functioning website should load in 3 seconds. Which, if you think about it, will leave you with 5 whole seconds to engage your targeted audience.
Slow load time is toxic for a great user experience. Slow websites kill conversions and views and could be the result of several different missteps from not optimizing image sizes to bad code. Regardless of the reason, websites that aren’t speedy need a redesign!
And, Google also penalizes websites with low page speed scores, so that should be motivating enough to optimize your website content accordingly. If you aren’t sure of your loading speed. You can check it through many different tools, including Google’s Test My Site. If the results aren’t good, it’s time for a cleaner, simpler design that’s built on a platform that takes speed into consideration.
8. Doesn’t Reflect Company’s Mission or Marketing Goals
If your company’s marketing goals, services offered or overall mission has changed, that should be reflected on your website. If not, it’s time for a website redesign. Your website is the digital storefront of your company. When a shopper walks into a store, they should be able to understand what type of business it is, the same logic applies to you sire.
Visitors to your website should always be able to decipher what it is you have to offer. With new offerings, you probably need to add new pages and enhance others, especially the home page. So, this is an opportune time to embark on a website redesign.
You want the visitors on your website to understand how you can solve their problems. You can’t do that if your services aren’t accurate. Make sure your prospects are aware of all the things you offer before they go somewhere else.
Besides, if you’ve made some new improvements to your business, added new products or have changed your branding, why wouldn’t you want to share them with the world? After all, your website is your biggest salesperson.
With new offerings, you probably need to add new pages and enhance others, especially the home page.
You want the visitors on your website to understand how you can solve their problems. You can’t do that if your services aren’t accurate. Make sure your prospects are aware of all the things you offer before they go somewhere else.
Your Site Doesn’t Reflect Your Content Strategy
Having compelling content on your website can help with building loyalty and improve your SEO. With constant changes to algorithms and the flood of content available, you need a content plan—one that is well reflected in your website. So, you need to think about how content strategy and your website align.
But do you have a documented content strategy? According to Marketing Profs and the Content Marketing Institute, 63% of businesses do not have a documented content strategy!
Your content strategy and website must be integrated. Once you have a robust plan in place, you need to ensure that’s represented on your site, whether that be in a new blog, optimized landing pages, or addressing SEO. Consider these questions:
- Can users easily find your content?
- Does your content include relevant calls-to-action?
- Can search engines easily find and index content?
If you answered no to these, it’s time to think about a website redesign.
9. Not Mobile Responsive
A mobile responsive site is no longer an option, it should be a requirement. However, even in 2019, there are still some sites out there that aren’t responsive and display incorrectly on devices. Can you imagine the user experience of such a site? It will be short because any prospect that lands on a non-mobile site while on their smartphone is going to bounce in a second.
Consider this, consumers spend about five hours a day on their smartphones according to an AdWeek survey. Further, up to 70% of all web traffic happens on mobile devices. In most cases, this surpasses the time spent on desktop, so you have to be where your market is. People want information while they’re on the go, and they want it fast.
In addition to ensuring the best user experience, Google will severely ding you if you’re not mobile-friendly. The “Mobilegeddon” from several years ago is still relevant, as Google continues to demote sites that don’t have a positive mobile experience.
Is it time to redesign your business website?
If you’re running into any of the issues listed in this article, if so, it’s time to shake things up. Redesigning a website is not a small undertaking, there are many steps that one must take before beginning to plan a redesign.
Assess your website’s biggest pain points. What’s missing? What can be improved? How are these issues negatively affecting your user’s’ experience? You don’t have to have all the answers, but taking the time to evaluate your online presence will get you one step closer to meeting your business goals.
Still unsure if you need to redesign your website? Contact us, we’re here to help.
