Is It Time to Redesign Your Business Website?
WordPress themes make it easy for any business owner to develop a website, even if the person doesn’t have any knowledge of coding.
However, some business owners design a website, but then keep the same design for several years. The problem with this is that, over time, themes become outdated.
An outdated website can hurt your business. Even if the information is still accurate, a poorly designed website that isn’t responsive could cause people to click away from your site.
And if you’re not utilizing SEO, you might not rank high on Google.
If you haven’t touched your website for several years, there is a high possibility that you need a website redesign. Here are seven signs that your business website is desperately in need of some attention.
Isn’t mobile-friendly
More and more people are accessing the web from mobile devices or tablets than computers. If your website isn’t mobile-friendly, you’re behind on the times.
Websites that aren’t mobile-friendly or responsive are hard to navigate from a phone; this could potentially cost you customers and sales.
A quick way to check to see if your site is responsive to different devices is to use different devices to access your site. If it is responsive, it should automatically resize with all navigation features available.
If it doesn’t resize or is hard to navigate, it is time for an upgrade! Most WordPress themes these days are already responsive, so finding a new one shouldn’t be challenging.
Information is outdated
A quick way to check if it is time for a redesign is to see if the information on your website is outdated. If you still have old staff members list or old events, it is time for a quick redesign!
If you struggle to regularly upgrade your website because you find the admin navigation challenging, it could be time to look for a WordPress theme that is easier to use so that you can update your website more regularly.
Ideally, all information should be updated regularly. If you’re listing events on your website, make sure to take them down as soon as they’re over. Potential customers may be turned off by outdated info.
Branding is inconsistent
Over time, the way you brand your business might change. Maybe you update your logos, or the colors you use, or the overall tone of your marketing materials.
However, any time you do a rebrand, you want to make sure that your website is consistent with the rest of your marketing materials. Lack of consistency across platforms may make people doubt the authenticity of your brand.
A quick way to assess this is to compare your website to your other marketing materials. If there are inconsistencies, you’ll want to start redesigning. Any time that you’re rebranding, you’ll want to make sure that nothing is overlooked; especially your website!
Challenging to navigate
In addition to making sure your website is responsive, you’re also going to want to make sure it is easy to navigate. This doesn’t just mean making sure you can click all the links; it means that you’re able to navigate your site logically.
A website that is easy to navigate will have clear categories, clickable headers and subcategories, logical navigation titles, and a search feature.
You might think your site is easy to navigate, but others might not. You can do a website focus group to get honest opinions about how easy your site is to navigate. If they have trouble, it is time to rethink your design.
Poor SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is what helps your website rank high on search engines. If you haven’t put thought into your SEO practices, it is time to redesign your website. A well-designed site that uses SEO will see an increase in website traffic.
Some basic SEO practices include incorporating keywords throughout your site, making sure your site is mobile-friendly, building quality content, and gaining backlinks.
SEO can be complex to understand, especially if you have never purposefully optimized your site for SEO. As a starting point, check out the following article by Digitrio: “Ultimate SEO Checklist for Website Redesign 2020”. Even incorporating a few basic practices can boost your SEO.
Visitors aren’t staying
If you check your analytics regularly, you should be able to see how demographics of your visitors, including what pages they visited and how long they spent on each page. Start paying attention to these analytics.
Determine the average length of each visit, as well as what pages visitors tend to visit. If they aren’t making it to your sales page, there is part of your website that isn’t effective.
As a starting point, determine where visitors are stopping. Look over those pages to see what is turning people away.
Maybe those pages need updated information or maybe they need to be redesigned. If you’re currently not using one, you might also want to add a sales funnel to your site.
Outdated design
As technology improves, it is only natural that website design improves as well. For example, Flash used to be extremely popular on websites; however, due to security concerns, it is no longer used.
Some outdated design features include flat graphics, stock images, large sidebars, lack of variation in fonts and colors, autoplay features, and clipart.
If you’re not sure if your website design is outdated, compare your website to other authority sites within your industry.
If your website looks like it is several years behind other websites, it is time to find a new design. Depending on your level of experience, you can always hire someone to help you modernize your website, but it will rise the website redesign cost.
In summary
If you haven’t redesigned your website in several years, it could be time for some updates! Your website should have a modern design that is responsive and easy to navigate.
The information on the website should be updated and relevant. And if you want your website to rank well on Google, you’re going to want to optimize your SEO. You can always use a WordPress Child Theme to make your redesign easier.
