Ultimate Checklist to Revitalize Your Business’ Website
How do you know if it’s the right time to redesign your site? Follow these 24 signs to help you decide if your website needs a redesign:
1. You don’t get the business results you want
If you aren’t happy with your current business results, it’s time to redesign your website. After examining your site’s conversion rates, you would have a clear idea of what needs to be corrected on your website.
A few questions to ask yourself in the redesign process are:
- Are you converting website visitors into leads and customers?
- Do your landing pages prompt people to learn more about your company by looking around your website, or do they give little value but look nice?
- Does your site have too much text or is it full of corporate speak?
- Do your site’s look and feel match your company’s strategy and “speak” to your target customers?
1.1 Your website isn’t generating enough traffic/leads, or website is slowly losing visitors over time
Your website is a tool to should be to provide information to people about your company and generate leads as a result of their interest. If your site’s only method of interaction is a generic “Contact Us” form, you need to identify different ways to increase website traffic.
1.2 The conversion of visitors and lead into customers is low
If conversion rate (the % of people that become customers after visiting your website) is less than 1 in 100 people that visit your website become a sales lead, then you need to fix your website.
Do you know how many new leads came from your website last month? How many new customers did you get via the website last month? If you think it isn’t enough or something similar, then it’s probably time to redesign your website so that it becomes a bigger contributor to your business.
1.3 Your business goals have changed or the purpose of your site has changed
Your business goals changed, and website needs to be as current as your latest business plan.
If your website’s purpose has changed, update its layout to be more in line with your goals.
2. Poor website’s usability
Do you know what is the most important factor in the design of the website? Large numbers of clients (76%) say when a website makes it easy for them to find what they want.
Try a simple test: on your website, how long does it take you to find the information you’re looking for? Is it quick or is it difficult? Is it easy to navigate the site and move from one side to another?
If your website visitors can’t find easily what they’re looking for, that means the website has been designed poor, without usability in mind. Visitors will leave your website very fast and they probably won’t come back. This represents a lost opportunity for you. If that’s the case, you’ll need a new website design that’s user-friendly and keeps your customers and prospects happy.
Good design is easy to navigate, helping visitors to find what they need and taking you closer to have a sale or getting in contact with you.
Answers to the following questions might help you to go into right redesign direction:
- Can visitors easily find the most basic things on your website (e.g. your contact information)?
- Is your website navigation confusing?
- Is your important content “hidden”?
- Are your products and services offer up to date?
- Do you need all the widgets on the website?
- Does your website have enough features?
- Is there too many features on your website?
2.1 Your website is not easy to use
Your website visitors want to be able to find what they are looking for on your website in as few clicks as possible. Remember that good navigation is not just about having an easy to use menu bar that is the same on all pages. You should also study how people use your website, which will help you to simplify your website navigation and help your sale.
Be aware that “bad user experience” has an effect on your site’s reputation like food poisoning for a restaurant’s. That is why your content website architecture served by an intuitive navigation is very important.
2.2 Your website isn’t easily accessible to mobile users or better said your website is not “happy” on every device
4 out of 5 people search for some products/services information on their smartphones. Mobile internet usage has overtaken PC usage. If your website is not optimized for mobile devices, you could miss a lot of potential clients.
What does mobile optimization include? Responsive website design — which represents a coding technique that allows your website to appear on any device regardless of screen size (desktop, tablet or smartphone). Different from having a separate mobile website, responsive design allows you to have the same website look great on all devices: desktop, smartphone or tablet screens. This technique is also recommended by Google, which has been actively supporting the growth of mobile usage.
Therefore, if you cannot view your business website on your mobile devices properly, neither can your customers. If that’s the case, they are going to go elsewhere. There’s no time to “wait and see” on this one. For this reason alone, you may need a website redesign.
Here is how you can determine if you have a site with responsive design:
- open a browser on your computer
- type a website address in your browser
- shrink the screen to the size of your phone’s screen
- if you see how the website adjusts the layout to the change in screen dimensions, and you don’t see a scrollbar at the bottom of the screen, then it is a responsive site
Disadvantages of not having your website “happy” on every device:
- a visitor can’t fully explore your site easily and quickly
- no click to call function
- no simple way to contact you through email submissions
- difficult to read your content because of scrolling and small text
2.3 You cannot edit your current site as it is too complicated to update it
Your phone number has changed, and you have to update it on your website. After clicking into several places (you could swear the right places to do that), you find it, but you don’t have any idea what to do with it. Then you search for a web designer that will help you without charging an arm and a leg because now your phone number is still wrong and all of the text is now orange, Comic Sans font, size 22.
Is this situation familiar to you? When did you update your site last? Why? If the answer is never because it is hard to update, then determine what the reason was for that. Is it because you simply don’t have the time, or you just don’t know how? If you don’t have the time, then you should try to find time keep your site updated. Clean, properly updated sites have returning visitors. If you find that you just don’t know how to update this could be a sign that your site needs a redesign. Web design more affordable now with WordPress design.
The most important thing I can say to you: You must have control over your site’s, content, host provider and admin role. If you don’t, you need to get it.
3. Poor website search engine optimization (SEO)
SEO represents everything you do to “convince” search engines that your site should appear in the first positions of their search results, to have more visitors to your website. SEO is the process of improving traffic to your website by increasing the site’s visibility in search engine results (e.g. Google). You can improve your website search engine optimization by improving content, making sure that the pages can be indexed correctly, and ensuring that your content is unique.
3.1 Your website is hard to find through Google searches
You can do the test: search for one of your products or services, or maybe your company name, e.g. “Sweet Papaya Creative”. Can you find desired search term on the first page of Google search results? If not, your website needs search engine optimization (SEO) which is very important for your business — clients must be able to find you on The Internet.
When you find your pages through Google search, do they have a nice heading and a nice two-line description that you wrote (e.g. Online Marketing Service — Sweet Papaya Services)? Or not (e.g. Home — Sweet Papaya Creative)?
3.2 Websites of your competitors are outranking your website in the search engine results
If the answer to this question is positive — it’s time for a website redesign. If the competition is outranking you, it most likely means that they have implemented search engine optimization (SEO) best practices in contrary to your website. You probably need more or better content and a more efficient internal linking structure.
3.3 Your website doesn’t have a blog
One of the best ways to increase your SEO signals is to write blog posts. Blogging increases website traffic up to an estimated 64%. Creating quality content on your site gives visitors an incentive to come back more frequently to your website, and it stimulates Google and other search engines to index/find your website content.
3.4 No social-media integration with your website
Your website promotion is necessary to increase its popularity. You need to promote your website by various social media channels. Nowadays, using the power of social media (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Instagram, etc.) is a must. If your website doesn’t support social media promotion, e.g. doesn’t have social sharing tools (e.g. social-media icons) that make it easy for visitors to share, tweet, or pin your content, it’s high time you get a redesign.
That will make it easier for visitors to connect with you socially and spread the word about your website and business through their social networks.
4. Website’s design issues
If you hesitate to share your website address with your friends, family or customers, then you already know you have a problem. Why suffer? Start a plan of action to get your site revamped.
Also, if it isn’t clear from a quick look at your website what your business is about, it’s time for a redesign, too. Design trends are constantly changing, so it is vital to keep up to date with new trends.
4.1 Your current website looks outdated
Visitors know in a short period if your website is up to date or not, simply by the way that it looks. Websites with broken parts, amateurish look, etc. are often skipped as visitors automatically assume that the website is old and will have only outdated content or nothing valuable at all to offer.
Therefore, if your website visitors think you’re website looks out of date, they may think other aspects of your business is out of date as well. They will take their business elsewhere and find someone with a more credible and trustworthy website.
4.2 Poor typography
Reading content on a PC is much harder than reading it on paper. Therefore, the eyes of a visitor should be able to distinguish easily each word to provide non-stressful reading. If the fonts on your website are too small (or even too big) or if the spacing of the text is not optimal the content will look very crowded, and the visitors will avoid reading them.
4.3 Improper images
Shiny, blinking or big images can give a good look to your website, but they also distract visitors attention from the content. Avoid using bombastic graphics to help visitor’s focus on your website’s content.
4.4 Your site content is static and rarely changing
New content improves your site from a search engine optimization perspective and makes site visitors see you as agile.
If you think your content is stagnant and dated, or your website visitors don’t get your message, you may need to find a better way of saying the same thing — consider to redesign your website. For best results, get an outside opinion.
4.5 Your target audience has changed
If your current website no longer speaks to the right audience, then the content and design should be reviewed. Before you jump into a redesign, make sure you define your target audience, their motivations to buy from you, and their perception that you are the right business to serve them. Your marketing team or consultant should be able to develop your consumer’s persona(s) before redesigning your website.
4.6 Lack of Calls to action
Every page needs a call to action, or why is it there? You need to invite e.g., prospective customers to join an email list, sign up for a newsletter or download a white paper to engage your audience without challenging them to buy. As you gain their trust and loyalty, they will be lead into your sales funnel where you can take them to a sale.
If you don’t have calls to action or if they are weak, redesign them to be strong. Creating a lead opportunity with great content is not enough. You have to invite to interact. Calls to action are the way you ask for engagement, without piling on sales pressure.
4.7 Your Landing Page isn’t communicating your message
Is your landing page communicating your message in an effective way? You have only up to 10 sec to grab your reader’s attention. Make sure that they understand your message correctly and what you’re trying to communicate to them.
4.8 No lead generation on your site
Your website needs not only to “speak” to your visitors but also to encourage ongoing interaction:
- Do you have an opt-in box on your website?
- Can people subscribe to a newsletter?
Capturing visitors’ email addresses is a very important step if you want to build a client base and allows people to “tell” you their interest in particular products/services that you offer.
5. Poor website’s technology used
5.1 Your site is slow/lazy
How fast is “fast enough”? Half of the people expect websites to load in under 2 sec, and many will abandon a site if it doesn’t load in 3 sec. Most web developers agree that if your site takes up to 5 seconds to load, then you should look into optimizing your site.
However, if your site is taking longer than 5 seconds to load, the redesign is recommended to reduce loading of certain elements (like background images, textures, custom fonts, etc.) along with the website speed up optimization. Less is more.
5.2 Parts of your website are not working correctly
Does your website have parts that are broken or giving you errors like “404 not found” message? If you have broken links, various error messages, missing images, etc., then you should consider a complete website redesign as online users don’t have the patience for sites that don’t work correctly.
Therefore, if there are one or more features on your site that are currently malfunctioning, it’s time to deal with them through a redesign process.
5.3 Your customers are demanding a new website’s functionality.
Perhaps the best reason of all to redesign your site is if your customers are demanding it, or, at least, requesting new features that ask for a redesign. If you need to add a blog, forums, e-commerce, or other major features or tools to your website, a redesign is a very probable option. Customer input is invaluable when it comes to deciding whether it’s time for a redesign.
5.4 Your website has become a “monster”.
Often, if you’ve had a website for a long time, you could notice a lot of additional stuff causing issues on your website, like multiple plugins, tons of blog posts, busy design including a lot of things on the homepage, etc. Sometimes our websites start out simple and then evolve into “Frankenstein” — in those cases redesign can help streamline your site.
5.5 Use of automatic effects on your website.
Automatic effects on your website (e.g. auto-play videos, audios and similar) can give an interesting look to your website, but usually very much annoying your visitors. Therefore, generous use of these and similar effects can considerably reduce your visitors experience on your website. That is why we recommend you to consider a website redesign.
5.6 Your third-party tools on website are outdated.
If you’ve embedded or using third-party tools on your website that improve its functionality, such as shopping cart widgets and some (or all) of these tools aren’t up to modern functionality standards and design, you’re best off updating them.
Nothing drives visitors away like third-party tools that are outdated regarding function or design, so you should move to more modern ones that’ll not only appeal to your visitors but also turn them into leads.
Wrapping up.
Just because your website meets some of the signs mentioned above doesn’t necessarily mean that your website needs an overhaul. For instance, just because your website takes a long time to load doesn’t mean that it is time to start from scratch and create a new website. Also, if your website is losing visitors, it may not be because of the website design, but rather the content on the site.
Website redesign is a complex undertaking, but the benefits of high-quality redesign can transform a good business into a great business. In today’s business world, companies need to adapt to changing demands to boost productivity. A website redesign benefits could be:
- promoting greater awareness of your company, products, and services
- increasing traffic to your site
- increasing lead generation
- delivering added value to your customers
- growing your business
How to “convince” yourself that it’s time your website needs a redesign? Visit your website to see if any of mentioned 24 signs apply. If you find some of the above signs, it could be that you either need to review the content and functionality of your website, or perhaps consider a complete review and redesign. The focus of a redesign should be the performance of the site although a fresh look can have a positive impact on your visitors and a positive effect on your company’s bottom line.
In the end, only you can make the final decision on whether your website needs a redesign or not!
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ultimate-checklist-revitalize-your-business-website-angela-swanson
Angela Swanson is a co-owner of Simple Solutions.io and Sweet Papaya Creative. She discovers new growth opportunities for businesses by applying web design and online marketing practices for new growth opportunities through understanding the market from the customers’ perspective, creating new possibilities, and delivering increased ROI.
Connect with Angela on LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter.
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