Today, your company’s web persona means just as much as your customer service or quality products. Because your website can reach beyond the geographical limitations of a brick and mortar location, it is questionably more important than your location. This leaves companies with the task of trying to maintain their online brand like their storefront or services. Does your website need a redesign? Here are the reasons to consider a one.
1) The results aren’t there.
You can have a beautiful website that is perfectly functional. If it is not performing to your expectations, a redesign might be in order.
Hiring a professional to help you work out the shortfalls is crucial. A website restructuring, with or without content and branding updates will help you to identify issues. Consider these questions:
- Is your call-to-action converting visitors into leads and customers?
- Are you using landing pages? Do they encourage users to learn more by digging deeper, or are they simply aesthetically pleasing pages with little value?
- Is your site too text-heavy or riddled with corporate speak? Are your content marketing efforts performing?
- Does your site’s match your company’s voice to your target audience?
2) The purpose of your site has changed.
As your goals change, your website should adapt to new strategies as well. Not every change in your company warrants a full redesign but it’s important to keep a pulse on your website during company changes. To make sure your site is still aligned with your goals. Ask questions like:
- How often do you modify your marketing strategy?
- Do your marketing strategy updates affect your conversion funnel?
3) Your website just doesn’t work.
This may seem like the obvious reason for a redesign, but website functionality can become obsolete fairly quickly. We have all stumbled onto a website that does not work. Remaining user friendly and technologically forward allows your site to be an effective tool for sales. Consider these questions when looking at a website redesign:
- Can a visitor readily find the most basic things on your site, such as contact information?
- Is your site navigation confusing?
- Is your important content hidden?
- Are your product and service offers up-to-date?
4) You want to add an effective web design strategy.
When considering a web redesign, you’ve likely learned a lot about what works, and what doesn’t. You may not know the functional changes websites have put in place, even if you visit often. Look at your website with a clear eye and ask questions like:
- Will customers be upset by a major overhaul?
- Do you have all the answers you need from your customers to make a significant change?
- Can you reduce costs by making small changes to a major feature?
5) Your site isn’t responsive.
Research shows that mobile website traffic is on the rise. If your site is not responsive, it can be delivering the wrong format to a mobile user. Mobile users have made it clear in industry research that they want a great UX on their phone or tablet.
6) You want to incorporate a better content strategy.
Great, updated content can improve your website usage in every fashion from customer retention to SEO. Updating content to adapt to search algorithms and results can increase your website usage while delivering qualified customers to your URL. While you are considering a website update, it is a good time to look into your content strategy. Ask these questions:
- Can your customers easily find your content?
- Does your content incorporate calls-to-action?
- Can the search engines find and index your content?
7) Your competitors have updated their site.
Not every change a competitor makes is good for you. With that being said, if there are industry wide changes being made on the web, you should probably consider their merits. Changes on behalf of your competition could set them up for better search results, better user flow and better conversion rates.
Obviously, you don’t need to give your site an overhaul every time one of your competitors changes theirs. Having said that, if they make changes that improve their rankings substantially and end up pushing you down in searches, it’s likely time to make some alterations to your site.
8) Your third-party tools are outdated.
Third party tools are used to increase functionality in items like shopping carts. As these programming pieces change, websites need to adapt on their side of the tool. This allows your website to meet modern functionality standards and allow the best user flow. To determine if you need to replace or remove some tools, ask these questions:
- How are these third-party tools working?
- Are they slowing your site speed down?
- Are new-and-improved versions now available?
Get Some Help
Your website is meant to bring you business. If it’s not doing that, it’s time to determine why not and make necessary changes. Contact us to see how a website redesign can help your business.
