Whens the last time you sat back and evaluated your website? No time like the present. Time to enhance things that worked well and time to drop or change things that didn’t meet your expectations.
Why don’t we have a look at your top sales tool. You know the one, it works 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year and doesn’t ask for a day off. Yep, I’m talking about your website.
Did your website meet, exceed or fall below your expectations? If your current website looks dated, doesn’t work the way you want it to or worse yet has broken links/pages, chances are that its time for a redesign.
Before you run out and grab the first web designer you see, stop and take a few minutes to actually write down what you want the redesigned website to accomplish or goals you would like the new website to have.
Here are 5 Reasons Your Website Needs A Redesign
1. People aren’t visiting your website like they used to.
When you look at your website statistics over a period of time – does the line trend down? Is the overall number of visitors going down? There can be many causes of fewer and fewer people visiting your website. Using your analytics take a look at the specific pages people are visiting as well as the ones very few are visiting. This will give you an idea of which pages you might want to enhance and/or some you might want to drop altogether.
2. Your website just looks plain old.
The pace of technological change is staggering. Websites done as little as 3-4 years ago can easily look outdated. Is your website ‘responsive’? (that means does your website adapt and change depending on which device is being used to view it). Were your customers even shopping on their smartphone 4 years ago? Remember your website is usually the first impression people have of your business – do you want them to associate your business with words like – old, outdated, slow, behind the times?
3. Does your website make your phone ring? or bring in interested customers?
Isn’t that the main reason you have a website to begin with? If your website isn’t performing the way you want it to, don’t just say oh well and ignore the problem. Bring in a professional to have a look at why and give you suggestions on how to improve it. Depending on the number of changes you need it might be more economical and efficient to give your entire website a overhaul.
4. You aren’t giving people a reason to visit your website.
Warning – I am going to be a little blunt here. Sometimes I hear business owners saying ‘I am too busy to update my website’. But guess what – your competitors aren’t. They are regularly adding new content on their website and getting new viewers. A new product launch, a new sale, an announcement about the company etc. If you had lots of new visitors when your website launched but now have very few it’s time to have a hard look at why. You need to dedicate resources to the task and give people a reason to come back.
5. Missing pages, broken links, images that don’t load.
Websites are almost like living breathing organisms, ok I might be exaggerating a little here but what I am trying to say is that things change over time. A website you had a link to 3 years ago has since moved that information to a different page – which causes your link to be broken. Perhaps you deleted a webpage you didn’t need anymore – but what if someone had bookmarked that page because they liked it – now a dead link as well. Nothing turns people off more than trying to navigate a website only to encounter these annoyances. Is that what you want your customers to experience?
Starting a website redesign project may seem a little overwhelming at first, but a good web professional will walk you through the process step by step and before you know it you’ll be breaking out that champaign and re-launching your shiny new website to awaiting fans.
Short on time and/or expertise? Get us to help you out. Check out our Roadmapping service.
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