Your website can be one of your best sales tools. Digital marketing today has become crucial to helping grow a business. A website allows your business to be connected and engaged with potential and current customers using a platform that can be easily accessed any time and any place.
Business owners often wonder what avenue of online marketing efforts will provide the biggest ROI, and while not always, as every business has unique goals, markets and audiences, more often than not it is still the website that gives a business the best connection to potential new clients.
So what does it mean for your business when the company website is under performing or outdated? How do you know when the business website needs an update? Let’s take a quick look into a few signs that point to a much needed website redesign.
The website is outdated.
If your companies website was built before the turn of the century, it is well past time for a redesign. Actually if your website is more than 10 years old, it most likely due for a much needed makeover. Your company website is meant to reflect your businesses mission, values and personality, so if it appears to be outdated, that in turn will make your business seem outdated, out of touch, maybe even a bit unprofessional.
If your website users are going to your website and they feel like they have a negative experience like that, like they are looking at a company that doesn’t stay up to date, then they are going to be much less likely to engage with your business. An outdated website presence is a good way to get visitors to turn around and leave pretty quickly. So if you are wanting your users to connect with your business, your story, then your website should be current, up to date, and easy to engage.
The website is not responsive
If your company’s website is not responsive, then you will know for sure that is is time to consider getting the website redesigned. Responsive, in web terms, simply means that the website is mobile-friendly, that it will adjust and shift to whatever screen size that it is being viewed on, whether that is a desktop, a laptop, tablet or phone.
Google has recently updated their algorithm to give priority to responsive websites in their search results. What this means is that if your company website is not responsive it will actually count against you, so when a potential customer types in a keyword related to your industry or market, your website will get pushed down the list a bit against those that have responsive sites. This makes having a mobile-friendly website a necessity to keep up with changing technology and user experience. People expect a good mobile experience when using the web on a mobile device, and given the increasing number of users surfing only on mobile it becomes even more crucial to provide an seamless website browsing experience.
The website doesn’t match the brand
Sometimes a business will update their company’s brand identity or logo and fail to update the website in order to reflect that change. If your website is vastly different form your primary branding, it can create a lot of confusion for your customers and potential customers and really just makes the business come across as unprofessional.
While it is not necessary to constantly update the look of your brand or website, it should most certainly reflect your company’s mission and values and keep a cohesive look and feel across all various media outlets.
The website loads slowly
If you have time to go pour yourself a fresh cup of coffee while your website is loading up, then it very well might be time to get that new website designed. A slow loading page will frustrate and annoy website users pretty quickly, which will make them pretty likely to close out your website and move onto another one. Web users these days can be a fickle bunch, and they will find it hard to connect with your brand when they have to sit and wait for a website to load. A newly redesigned and properly built website will increase your loading times and therefore make your site much easier to engage and interact with in order to turn potential customers into paying customers.
A high bounce rate
You may not be familiar with the term “bounce rate”, but that term refers to website users who visit your website and leave rather quickly, so instead of browsing and clicking to explore multiple web pages, they leave within seconds. In order to find out what your bounce rate is for your website you would need some sort of analytics tied to your site to see this information. The goal of course is to have a very low bounce rate, so if you are finding you have an extremely high bounce rate, then it is again time to seriously consider a new website design. When you have a quick loading, interactive and engaging website, you are much more likely to keep your visitors interest which will in turn be more effective in turning them into a valuable customer.
A clean, fast and modern website is key to engaging and keeping your website visitors interest and growing your business. If your website manages to fall into any of the categories we have discussed then it could very well be time to invest in an upgrade and consider a new website redesign to boost your company’s online presence. If you need help figuring out if your website is ready for a redesign we can help, to learn more about our web design strategies and ideas click here.
