15 Signs Your Website Needs a Redesign
Your website should be your most powerful marketing tool, when that is no longer the case it's time to start thinking about redesigning your website. This can be a hard decision for many businesses and organizations as they may not know the tell-tale signs that a website revamp is needed. So to help we have put together a list of 15 signs your website needs a redesign.
1. Branding Disconnect
It is common for organizations to change their branding over time as their market and target audiences evolve. You want to make sure your website offers users the same look and feel as they navigate throughout the different sections of your website and other platforms that are associated with it, such as social media profiles.
Having a consistent brand not only helps with visually reinforcing your organization into a visitors mind, but also helps to provide a feeling of comfort, approval, and trust. These positive feelings go a long way towards converting visitors into leads and leads into conversions.
2. Difficult to navigate
Your website's navigation is a critical element. It works to inform visitors where they are, where they have been, and show them where to go. Having a disconnect at any level of a user's journey can lead to confusion, frustration, and website abandonment. This often leads to a decrease in sales and returning visitors, along with an increase in frustrated users and high bounce-rates (which we’ll talk about later).
Fortunately, with proper planning and the use of great navigation design fundamentals, any visitor will be able to navigate your website with ease and have a great experience.
3. It's not responsive
According to CIODive in 2018 up to 70 percent of search queries came from mobile devices and Google is now basing its rankings on the mobile version of your website rather than the desktop. If your website is not responsive, meaning it automatically adjusts for different-sized screens and viewports, your search engine rankings are being diminished dramatically.
If you have questions about whether your website is responsive or “mobile friendly” Google provides a simple mobile-friendly testing tool that will evaluate your website in seconds. Not too happy with the results? That might be a good indicator that you should revisit your website’s design to improve its responsiveness.
4. New functionality is Needed
As your organization grows and evolves you may need more tools to help keep your business growing. Would having customers schedule appointments online help your business? Is a revamp of your eCommerce platform needed? Can new integrations help with marketing campaigns, social media and search engine optimization?
Adding new functionality gives you the opportunity to make the website experience better for your users and for your business. Keep increased functionality in mind when you begin to brainstorm your website redesign objectives and be sure to incorporate them.
5. It’s old
There is no set expiration date for a website, but clients often ask “how often should you redesign your website”? A good rule of thumb would be every three to five years. Why? Because technology changes quickly, along with best practices and search engine optimization (SEO) strategies needed to stay in front of the changes.
If your website is more than five years old it’s probably time to start thinking about a redesign. At this age, the value of website redesign is easy to see and the impact a redesign can have on your business would be extensive.
6. Security concerns
Web security is one of the last things many organizations think of when they are contemplating whether or not it's time to redesign. Though, this is arguably one of the most important aspects to keep in mind. Many websites hold valuable information about their customers and clients, with that in mind it's important to make sure that your website is secure as possible.
Older websites may hold increased security risks due to them not being updated with the latest coding standards and security patches. If there is any concern about the security of your website, an overhaul could be your best option.
7. Your competitors
Keeping tabs on competition within your industry is advisable. Chances are that your potential customers are also looking at, and interacting with some of your competitors. If their website is easier to navigate, looks cleaner, is optimized for conversion, and was designed with user experience (UX) in mind. You could be at a disadvantage in a head to head matchup.
Users today often interact with a brand online prior to shopping their products or services. If your website is lagging behind competitors, you may already be losing potential customers which is definitely one of the signs your website needs a redesign.
8. Your website is slow
The speed at which your website loads can have a huge impact on your business. Recent studies have shown, that about 40% of online searchers will abandon a website that takes more than three seconds to load. This can not only affect user experience and website conversions, but slower load times will also have a negative impact on search engine rankings.
It is a good practice to test your web page load times annually at the very least to ensure this is not an issue for your mobile visitors. To test your websites speed, we recommend you try using Pingdom’s Speed Test Tool or Google's PageSpeed Insights Tool.
9. Poor UX Design
User experience (UX) is imperative to building a successful website. Pleasing users sounds simple in theory, but in reality, many websites miss the mark. To provide a great experience you must ensure easy navigation, valuable and engaging content, and clear calls-to-action all while maintaining a visually clean design.
Having a poor UX design is an easy way to lose leads, conversions, and clients. One of the most innovative UX solutions to date is called personalization. This is when your website delivers targeted, in-context experiences that drive engagement, conversion, and loyalty through producing a unique experience for each user as they interact with your website.
10. Low Conversion Rates
Having potential customers find and interact with your website is great, but if those visitors are not converting… there’s a problem. Websites that have a hard time generating leads and conversions are typically missing key elements on-page to help with the conversion process.
These missing elements could be an array of items including social proof, clear calls-to-action (CTA’s), content that speaks to your target audience or many other things. If they are not converting with you odds are they will be converting with a competitor, making low conversion rates a telltale sign of the need for a website redesign.
11. SEO difficulties
When your website is not ranking well on search engines like Google and Bing it’s bad for business. This could indicate a problem with your website, or a lack of optimization. Your website should be your most powerful marketing tool, so if your search results are less than desired, it could be time to revamp your website.
To be sure that your SEO issues are website related and not just a lack of proper optimization, it may be a good practice to have an SEO audit completed for your website. A digital marketing professional will be able to review your website and let you know what actions you would need to take to help increase search engine rankings. If a new website is needed they would be able to provide that information.
12. Spammy or Outdated Website Design
Today's web visitors have an idea of what a professional website should look like. If your website is cluttered with poorly sized images, bad content placement, and terrible color choices you will have a hard time portraying your business in a professional way. This will impact the perception of trust with your website and your brand, causing potential clients to doubt your product or service.
Remember, your website should be the face of your business. Long before you ever speak with a lead or prospective client, they will have most likely interacted with your brand online and bad first impressions are hard to overcome. To establish trust with your prospects and visitors alike, make sure you place your best foot forward with a professional and up-to-date looking website.
13. Still Using Flash
Flash websites were awesome for a while as they gave designers the ability to create great looking websites. Then when mobile phones began to gain popularity Flash was no longer a good option. Beyond the incompatibility with mobile devices, Flash was notoriously horrible for search results. As search engines could not recognize the way Flash showed content, making them show poorly in search queries.
14. Complicated content updates
Making changes to your content, adding a blog post, or updating small elements of your website should not require a small miracle. If your websites platform makes it difficult to achieve these minor changes, you may want to consider building a new website using a new content management system (CMS).
There are many open source CMS options to choose from that make adding, creating, and updating simple. To learn more about what CMS may be right for your business or organization take a look at Drupal, WordPress, and Magento then compare and contrast the benefits of each.
15. Your Bounce Rate is High
If your website has a high bounce rate, you should definitely take notice. Your bounce rate is calculated by the number of visitors who came to your website and left without viewing another page (you can find your bounce rate easily in your Google analytics report under audience overview).
Different kinds of pages will have varying bounce rates, for instance: a page containing a contact form should have a higher bounce rate than your home page. Having a page or two with a high bounce rate could be caused by many things. These could be slow page load speed, bad or unclear content, poor UX design, and the list goes on and on. If you are noticing a higher site-wide bounce rate, it could be your existing web design and could call for a revamp in the near future.
Is It Time to Redesign Your Website?
There are many things to keep in mind as you consider if it's time to redesign your website. If while reading the 15 signs we listed above you started thinking "Yes! this describes my website to a T!”, don’t worry, we can help! Get in touch today and we can help you move your website forward and grow your business.
