It used to be that a website was little more than a digital brochure for your business. It gave basic information about your company and that was about it.
But in today’s world, your website needs to be more than that.
If you’re doing it the right way, it should be a dynamic place where people can get to know your company and build a relationship with your brand. Ultimately, your website should be your best salesperson.
If that’s not the case, it might be time for a website
redesign.
Top Reasons You Should Redesign Your Website
Certainly, overhauling your website is a big effort. But, there can be very good reasons for doing it.
If you’re not sure if a website update is order, here are a few reasons why you might want to do it now.
1. It doesn’t drive results.
Is your website attracting visitors and helping you grow your audience?
Does your site offer regular, fresh content that allows your visitors to learn from you and build a relationship with your team?
And more importantly, is your website helping drive leads and sales for your business?
If the answer is “no”, it might be time to look at an overhaul.
Sometimes, there are some simple tweaks you can make to your existing site to improve conversions. But a lot of times, the problem lies in how the site is designed and built.
If you don’t have regular, fresh content (such as a blog), lead-nurturing content or effective calls-to-action on your site, you might need to re-think your design.
2. It no longer represents your brand.
If you’ve been a longtime reader of the Blue Kite Blog, you’ll notice that our look has changed. We updated our logo, refreshed our overall image and launched a new website to match.
Could we have changed our logo and made it work on the old site? Perhaps. But, the look was no longer fresh or representative of our brand, our team and what we do.
If you change your logo, company name, messaging or the focus of your services, you may need a website change to go with it. After all, brand consistency across all of your marketing channels is important. And, that starts with your website.
3. It’s difficult to update.
The web has come a long way in the past 10 years. It used to be that making a simple copy change on your website would take an act of congress (or at least multiple calls to the IT department).
Now, content management systems (CMS) make it simple to make basic changes to the site without involving developers or the IT folks.
But, if that’s not the case at your company, it might be time to make an upgrade.
Today’s web is fast and nimble and if you can’t make changes quickly, you are missing out on some grand opportunities. Not to mention, it makes your job more challenging if you can’t quickly add blog posts or make needed changes.
If you want to use a CMS, you can use open-source platforms such as WordPress (which is what this site is built on), Drupal or Squarespace. Or, there are many other proprietary options out there.
The bottom line is that you need the ability to make changes to website quickly and easily.
4. It’s not mobile compatible.
Website traffic from mobile devices is on the rise — with nearly 30 percent of all people accessing the Internet from a phone or tablet.
And, these numbers are not showing any signs of slowing down.
Check your website traffic and see how many people are accessing it via a mobile device. If 20 percent of your traffic is coming from mobile devices, it’s high time you do something about it.
With our site, we saw about 15 percent of our traffic coming from mobile in 2013. But this year? That number has jumped to 25 percent.
That’s a huge segment of our audience that was getting a sub-optimized experience on our website.
When it comes to optimizing for mobile, there are several options to consider. Here are your top choices when it comes to designing a site for mobile devices:
- Mobile friendly site. At the very least, your website should be viewable on a mobile device. For instance, this means you should avoid using Adobe Flash because it can’t be seen on an iPhone. Our old site fit this bill, but you had to zoom in to read the text and it was clunky to navigate. But, at the very least you should be able to access your site on any device.
- Mobile responsive design — Mobile responsive design means that the website experience will adapt to whatever screen size the viewer is using. This is a very flexible solution that gives visitors access to your entire site in a mobile-friendly way. Our site was built this way and this is the option we are recommending most for our clients.
- Separate mobile site. Larger websites — especially those with eCommerce solutions — should consider a completely separate site that’s designed for the mobile experience. This might not include every piece of content, but it makes the most important pieces of content very easily accessible on a mobile device.
- Mobile app. Not every business needs a mobile app. People are picky about the apps they add to their phone. However, there are some instances where it might make sense. For instance, if it offers an easy utility, something that people will access regularly or is a membership-based site, an app might make sense.
Need help deciding which is best? Here’s a great article that gives you an overview of these options.
5. It doesn’t serve your audience.
This one is a little trickier to gauge, but you need to ask if your website is adequately serving your audience.
One way you can do this is to survey your customers and visitors to your site. This helps you see if your website is answering the most common needs they may have.
You can also pay attention to the calls your team gets on a regular basis. Are you getting questions about items that people should be able to find on your website? If people can’t seem to find that information, it might be that your navigation and design needs improvement.
There are also a number of handy website tools you can use to analyze your website’s performance. For instance, heat mapping can show you where people are looking on your site and usability testing can get you feedback on your site and how easy it is for them to find information.
6. It just looks outdated.
If the website design hasn’t been updated in the past 10 years or if you’re embarrassed to send people to your site, you might want to consider a design refresh.
After all, people judge the credibility of your business based on the look of your website. If your design is outdated, that says something about your brand.
Make sure your website reflects the kind of image you want your business to portray.
Are you ready for a new website?
Do you think it’s time to upgrade your company’s website? What are some other reasons businesses should consider overhauling their website?
