10 Signs You Need to Redesign Your Website

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In today’s tech-savvy world, a company’s website is analogous to a retail location’s storefront or the cover of a book.

In other words, it will take a website visitor seconds to judge whether or not they want to purchase goods or services from you.

Believe it or not, if you don’t have a website or it’s frequently down or difficult to navigate, someone may immediately cross you off their list.

If you suffer from any of the website woes mentioned below, you should undoubtedly address the issue.

If that’s not possible or you suffer from several of the issues mentioned below, it may be time to consider a website redesign.

1) Your site isn’t responsive or mobile-ready

Responsive / Mobile friendly website design

If you don’t think mobile is something you need to worry about yet, consider that mobile searches surpassed desktop as far back as October of 2016.

The same goes for internet usage on mobile in general and that mark was hit the following year, with “51.3 percent of worldwide internet usage in October, compared to 48.7 percent via desktop.”

If your core customers or prospects are more likely to be on mobile than desktop, then your website should definitely be responsive in addition to being desktop ready.

A responsive website requires your designer to design for a multitude of devices and operating systems.

A responsive site basically adjusts the design and ease of use of your site based on the device the end user is using to access your website. A simple test you can conduct yourself is by visiting your website on your own device via Google or Safari.

Once your site loads on your mobile device, is it still easy to navigate? Is the copy legible without zooming in? If you answered no to both of these, your site is not mobile ready.

2) It’s not optimized for SEO

Search Engine Optimization - SEO

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is defined as the process of optimizing your website to appear organically in search results. While you aren’t paying for advertising directly, the tactics required to support SEO, such as content creation and keyword selection, do come at a price.

In fact, there are many factors that support a well optimized website.

But, when a well designed website is combined with stellar SEO strategies, business owners can let lead generation work in the background while focusing on other areas of their business, such as new business development or customer care.

3) It’s very busy and cluttered or looks outdated.

As mentioned in the introduction, if your website doesn’t put modern design tactics to use, you are undoubtedly sending that prospect to your competitor down the street.

Today, websites are a reflection of your business.

If your website looks like it was born in the 90s or its cluttered with too many design elements or copy, you are likely to lose that visitor quickly and thus, their business.

Do your research on typical website design elements used in your industry, as that does often dictate the approach needed, or check out this post from the inbound marketing experts at Hubspot.

4) It requires a developer to make updates or the CMS isn’t easy to use.

Custom Coded Website & App Development

A website that isn’t easily updateable is a disservice to you and your business.

Even if you plan to have someone design and update your website on an ongoing basis, the CMS (Content Management System) and login credentials to your site should always be in your hands.  More importantly, never purchase a website that only one person knows how to update.

For many small businesses, WordPress is a cost effective and robust CMS.  There are others, such as Squarespace, which tend to be popular with eCommerce shops. But, more importantly, your website should be designed based on your business needs and not the CMS the designer wants to use.

WordPress is a great solution also because if you eventually decide to bring web design and development in house, it’s very popular and easy to find individuals that have years of experience with the platform.

5) It doesn’t clearly communicate your core competencies in a succinct manner

If your website is elegantly designed but cluttered with too much copy, you will lose a visitor in an instant.

It’s important to have concise, clear messaging and communicate only your core competencies on your home page, above the fold, for example.

Website copy should utilize the KISS theory – Keep It Simple, Stupid. Your copy should target your core customer or audience and put succinct, clear headlines to use.

6) It doesn’t provide you with insight or analytics on visitor activity

Analytics form submissions case study

A beautifully designed website with SEO does little good if analytics aren’t in place on your site.

That’s because analytics provide you with a glimpse of how visitors are reacting to your website as well as where traffic is coming from, both of which will provide you with insight into adjustments you need to make to your site and inbound marketing efforts.

Many WordPress users opt for Google Analytics for tracking.

7) It loads too slowly

You might have a beautifully designed website, but if server performance, code density or text-based graphics are slowing your site down, you may be losing future customers before your site fully loads.

You can either test your site from home or ask some friends to test it out to get load time feedback.

Or, you can test it using many tools available online, such as:

Hosting / Server speed test by bitcatcha

Website speed test by Google

Either way, it’s critical that you pay attention to load time as well. Google will prefer to show quick-loading websites in it’s results, and for good reason. User experience tests show that cold visitors drop off constantly for every second your website doesn’t load.

8) It doesn’t convert visitors into buyers

Convert visitors to buyers

This website analytic, known as your conversion rate, is found in your website analytic tool, such as Google Analytics.  It can be due to poor website design, a confusing color palette or copy that doesn’t convert.

While this challenge is a tough one to address, you’ll want to look at all aspects of your site, including which pages and types of content are converting or being viewed the most, in order to correct this issue.

9) There aren’t multiple ways for interested visitors to contact you.

Today, website visitors either want to receive ongoing information from you via an email newsletter or contact you with their preferred method, whether by phone, chat or a form.

Methods to contact you should be easily accessed throughout a website visitor’s journey, perhaps in the same location on every page or via a highly, colorful button known as a CTA (Call To Action).

10) It doesn’t have various forms of content for visitors to read or download

Today, everyone likes to consume content in their preferred manner.

As a result, it’s important to have a wide variety of content for website visitors to choose from, whether it’s a blog, video library or a selection of white papers and case studies.

The point here is to have variety and that you are adding new content weekly, which is beneficial for multiple reasons.

First, it keeps people that are interested in your company or product coming back for more.

And, second – it supports your SEO strategy, which in turn will help organically lead to more inbound traffic to your website.

Summary

In summary, while this list might seem long and that we’ve emphasized every one as a must have, the truth is that all of these factors are important to the success of your website.

When combined together, these tactics will produce the results you want, the analytics you need and more importantly, new business to maintain a healthy business or an aggressive growth plan.

If you’d like a free assessment of your website or you’d like to discuss how a redesigned website can help grow your business, we’re happy to help.

Give us a call and we’ll come see in you in Champaign, Danville or the surrounding area to reduce your time investment. We’ll follow up with some recommendations and how AWEBCO can help.

AWEBCO

AWEBCO

Awebco is a website design and development agency based out of Danville, Illinois. Founded in 2015, Awebco continues to serve local businesses and national businesses in the USA. Our mission is to help business owners eliminate the task of building and maintain their website by hiring us to do it for them.
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