If a picture is worth 1,000 words, what is a website worth? 1,000 visits a day? If you haven’t updated your website in a while, it may not be. Your website is often the first point of reference for new clients to discover and research your business. It is up to you to make sure that your website represents your brand in all its glory. Delve into the list below to see why it may be time for you to start thinking about a website redesign.
It’s No Longer Meeting Marketing Goals
Is your website receiving the visitors and leads you desire? If not, it may be time for an update. Outdated content, lack of a buyer’s cycle, and no clear call-to-action can all be detrimental to your website and could be preventing you from generating leads. Focusing your marketing efforts on concepts such as inbound marketing could bring clients directly to you through your website.
It’s Past Its Prime
If your website looks old, there’s a good chance your visitors will think it is old. It won’t matter that you have the latest content up if your visitor takes one look at that burst graphic, ribbon banner, or photo carousel and turns back the other way. Update the look of your website with a simple modern design that makes sure you are putting your best foot forward.
Flash
Flash is dead. Barely clinging on to its last breath, Flash’s once mesmerizing animations are fast becoming a thing of the past. Flash is not supported on iPhone or iPad devices, and it is not certified for any device OS beyond Android 4.0. To top it all off, search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo can’t even read it which makes it horrible for rankings.
Still want to create fancy animations and video? Have no fear, with HTML5 many of these same animations can be created with a fraction of the effort and a smaller file size.
Outdated Content
This one should really be a no-brainer. If your company has changed in the past 7 years, 3 years, or 1 year…then so should your website’s content. People look to your website as a valuable source of information about your company, and if your website is out of date then you could be losing potential customers.
Too Much Content
This is a tricky topic, but sometimes a website can have too much content. Think about a website you’ve visited recently. Did you have to search forever for the information that you needed, or was it presented in a clear and concise manner? A good website presents you with the content you need in a simple, easy to read format. It might be time to think about doing some spring cleaning, less is more.
New Products/Services
If you are introducing a new product or service to your company’s repertoire, it might also be wise to reflect this update on your website. Showcasing a new feature on your website has the potential to bring in new traffic to your website. It also gives you a great way to follow up from all those featurettes and news articles your marketing/PR team has been working so hard to promote.
Social Media
Social Media is the new way for potential customers to get a feel for your company’s personality and view its interactions. It is often the first place they look to get peer reviews, see your involvement in the community, and to get an insight into how you operate both on a professional and informal level. If you’re on top of the game and sporting a strong social media presence, it would be wise to include social sharing, links to follow your company, or even a live Twitter feed right on your website itself.
Content Management System
Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to edit your website yourself? No more having to contact your web designer every time you wanted to freshen up your content, or introduce a new company event. Well the good news is, you can with a content management system (CMS). Think of a CMS as a website template that can be built by a developer, they create all the code and the styling, but the content can be edited by you! Wanting a website that can be changed on the fly by anyone with permissions to do so is a great reason to want to redesign your website.
Mobile Friendly
It is a changing world; studies show that mobile devices make up 28% of all internet traffic. This means that your potential clients may no longer be sitting behind a desk when they first hear about your company, and your traditional website could be hurting your business. Websites not designed with mobile viewing in mind often have extensive loading times, and this could mean that clients might not wait for your site to fully load before jumping back to research the next website on their search.
Fear not, I give you responsive web design, a solution to this multi-device world we are living in. A responsive design website is a website that automatically optimizes and sizes itself based on the size of the screen it is displayed on. This means that your users will now be able to get a similar viewing experience across mobile, tablet, and personal computer devices! Consider responsive web design when thinking about your next redesign.
Conclusion
There are many reasons to want to redesign your website, but the number one reason for a redesign should be your audience. Redesigning your website is a great way to bring in new customers, keep the current clients coming back, and expand your brand’s digital presence. Create your new website with your clients in mind and the rest will follow.
Speaking of a redesign…check out MPAY’s newly redesigned website!