Ten Tips You Need to Know Before You Redesign Your Website

Technology is developing at lightning speed, and along with it, the world wide web. Customer behaviour online is changing the fabric of business faster than ever before. At the same time, your company's website must also evolve. To make sure your website is working in the best possible way, you need to be updating your site regularly with fresh new content, and it requires constant development to optimise it for your customers' needs. Sometimes a company's needs or branding changes so drastically it's more sensible to make a brand new site.   A website redesign is not only about the new design, web technology has changed dramatically in recent years and can today offer a better user experience, easier content management, better functionality, automation and much more. If you feel like your business website no longer meets your primary business goals, here are 10 points that help you decide whether it's time for a website redesign.

1. Your website is from 2012

When was the last time your business website had a revamp? The best practice in web mastery recommends that you need to redesign or re-platform your website entirely every 2-3 years. By this time, essential developments will have happened in technology and design trends. Although the web develops extremely fast, you don't need to worry about every little thing. Smartphones and mobile browsing on the internet have been mainstream for a decade, but only a few businesses have set their digital strategy to mobile-first.
If you can't remember the last time you considered editing or adding new content to your website, it's a good idea to make a new one. Even worse, does your website include any Flash elements, automatic music/video player, shiny banners, or drop shadows? It's time to make a redesign for sure!

2. The website has no automation

Growth is a natural part of every business. This, in turn, means that your website needs to change. How else will your customers know that your business is doing great? The problem emerges when the initial website doesn't support the acceleration required. For example, your website has only product descriptions, but you want to add an e-commerce shopping cart or chat facility. If you cannot develop your pages the way that you want them, your online business will stand still and watch others grow. Often it's a lot easier to re-platform entirely and build a new website to a new system with built-in automation and features to help your business move smarter, better and faster, rather than to improve the old one.

3. Your company staff page doesn't meet reality

Company growth often comes with a change in staff. You now need to urgently show the changes on your website if you hire new staff or your employees have changed roles substantially. Lack of further information will out-date your website. Also, you will get a negative image if you show employees that may have moved on. Without adding news about your products and people, your business potentially loses customers – they cannot get new information about your business activities. The most frustrating thing is when you cannot make the changes by yourself, it's too complicated, or you don't have the access needed. It's quite common that you just don't have the skills in-house. It's challenging to keep an up to date online presence if your team doesn't have the know-how for making simple amendments to your site.  

4. The website platform doesn't meet your business growth 

Business goals are changing, and the changing needs transfer to the business website. A website that was created a few years ago may not support it. Many old websites were created in HTML format where you need to change the code to make any changes on the site. This kind of content management is very complicated. If you want easy editor access and easy to use add-ons to automate some of the most common tasks like customer management or lead generation, you should take the leap and definitely develop a new website.

5. Your competitors' websites are more beautiful than yours

Your competitors changed their website and suddenly risen from the ashes only to steal your clients with their stunning new website? When you can admit that a competitor's website is prettier than yours, it's definitely time to decide to make significant changes. Their site could be more functional, easier to use, better organised, modern, have pop-ups to facilitate visitor engagement and automated follow up campaigns. 
Did you know that 7 out of 10 website visitors make their purchasing decision based on the look and feel of the business website? When your website is worse than your competitors', you can say "goodbye" to your clients.  

6. The content is outdated

Does your website still have broken links, like 404 error pages? Although fixing broken links may be easy, it could refer to a bigger problem: your website is unorganised and poorly maintained.
If your website has many broken links, errors, missing images and other elements that are not working correctly, you should opt for a redesign. When creating a new site, make sure to choose a content management system (CMS) that makes it easy for you to update information and add new pages. This helps you to avoid outdated content.
You may want to consider a do it for you service at this point. So you can focus on the business in hand and leave managing the website up to professional. Get in touch here .

7. Target audience expectations/needs have changed

 Have your website visits dropped? Are your hard-earned and paid for by advertising website visitors left the page without any further scrutiny causing high bounce rates? Maybe your target audience expectations have changed? Your website is not serving consumers' needs. Check your website statistics to determine your visitors' common path on your site. How do they arrive on your site? When and where do they leave your site? Suppose your pages have a high exit rate. In that case, it's a sign that you need to consider a tweak of your marketing strategy and consider a platform that supports your strategy for getting more new customers and to get customers to spend more and come back more often. Did you know that websites that have Artificial Intelligence enabled see a 19% increase in visitor engagement?

8. You're missing out on Social Media 

No one doubts social media's importance in a modern marketing plan. If you don't share your social channels on your main marketing channel - your website - how can visitors find you in the social sphere? Often, people are too lazy or fickle to start looking for themselves. Social media is an excellent tool for developing customer relations and promoting your brand. If your website is missing social buttons, be sure to add them. Also, it's a good idea to check out your blog and add sharing buttons to each blog post.

9. Your website is not mobile-friendly

This is a biggie. Over the last five years, you will have seen a massive increase in visits from mobile devices but are your visitors leaving your site before converting? The problem is that a regular website doesn't meet mobile user needs. The trends in mobile technology will only bring more and more visitors to your site while they browse the internet on their smartphones. 
That's why it's crucial to offer them a dedicated mobile-friendly user experience. If your site editor does not offer responsive design, it's not going to be mobile-friendly, and you'll be irrelevant very quickly, missing out on a massive slice of the internet pie. Check this Google mobile-friendly test .

10. Your website is not appearing on search engines

Your website appearance on a search engine results page (SERP) requires constant technical adjustment and content updates. To adjust the technical elements include activities like choosing keywords and optimising pages for relevant keywords. A new CMS system will make it easy to set metadata yourself without having to change the code. If you currently don't have a CMS, you probably need help from professional web developers or Search engine optimisation (SEO) specialists. This can become expensive.
Search engines like Google, Yahoo! Bing, Yandex etc. consider fresh and relevant content as a ranking factor. To meet their criteria and stay on top of search results you need to be adding fresh content regularly. Consider a daily, weekly and monthly schedule. So it's imperative that you can update your own site content and add new pages independently. The easiest way to keep your site regularly updated is by facilitating a weekly blog! 

Conclusion

If some of the situations sounded all too familiar, it's an indication that your website may be out of date and needs refreshing. Maybe you don't have to start from the ground and build a brand new site. But it's essential to remove the errors and keep your website at the top level. You can be sure that your potential clients are looking for service providers with prettier, more user-friendly and trustful websites. So make sure you are the one who stands out!