7 reasons to redesign your website

In this day and age, every company has a website. Everyone knows that it is super important to have a website, but what about updating or redesigning it?

“Redesign” is not a word that people like for many reasons. “I just built it a few years ago” or “I just spent a bunch of money… Now I have to spend more?!”. But honestly, your website is your visitor’s first impression of your business, and it’s best to make sure that you’re always showing your A-game.

In many cases, a redesign can really be as simple as tweaking the layout or colors. It can sometimes mean a complete overhaul of the site, which, while stressful, is necessary if you want to look your best. Here are eight great reasons to do a redesign:

1: You are not getting the results that you want.

A website’s purpose should be to build your client base and turn visitors into customers. What if it’s not doing that? You may have an excellent site that is functional, mobile friendly and beautiful, but it’s not getting the conversions or traffic that you thought you would. So, what do you do?

Examine your site’s conversion rates and traffic.
Sometimes just looking into basics can show what you need to adjust. Figure out if your call-to-actions, landing pages, content or “voice” of the site can be improved to facilitate those conversions better.

2: The purpose or vision of your company and/or site has changed.

One thing we’ve learned is that marketing strategies can be somewhat fluid and morph into something entirely different based on results you’re getting. Your marketing strategy and goals need always to be aligned with your site. Consider the following:

• How often is your marketing goals or strategies changing or being tweaked?
• When you do make changes to your marketing strategies, does it affect your sales funnel?
• When was the last time your marketing strategy was updated, tweaked or given a total overhaul? (It might not be the website that is the issue)

Make sure that you check your site against your business’ purpose and marketing goals. If they do not match, you may need to do a redesign.

3: Your website does not work properly.

The functionality of your site is critical as this causes traffic and conversions to decrease significantly. Think about the following while visiting your site:

• When someone visits your site for the first time, can they find all of the necessary things on your site? Contact form, phone number, services you provide, etc.
• Is the menu/navigation confusing?
• Is the purpose of the site apparent? For example, if your goal is to have the visitor contact you via a form, is that easily done with minimal effort?
• If you sell or display products, is everything up to date? Do you have deals from 6 months ago or pricing that is not correct anymore?
• Are visitors supposed to be able to do something but they cannot? For example, if you list job postings, can people actually apply to them?

4: Your site is not responsive or mobile friendly.

Did you know that in 2015, Google changed their algorithm so that if your site is not mobile responsive, then you will appear farther down the list on mobile devices (sometimes significantly so!). If your site is not responsive, you could be losing leads and even some of your current customers!

Mobile friendliness is the primary reason why we recommend redesigns because our framework means you’ll be responsive out of the box for no additional cost. Regardless of who’s working on your site though, make sure this is a priority for your redesign.

5: Your site is not responsive or mobile friendly.

Content is essential for your site. Content is what is indexed and how search engines decide to position you in their results. Great content with a solid marketing plan is your best bet for SEO and conversion rates. Make your site an authority with your content and build trust, showing your visitors you know what you are talking about.

• Is your content easily found by anyone and everyone?
• Do you have clear call-to-actions?
• Is your site searchable and able to be indexed by search engines?

Some content management systems have an option that prevents search engines from indexing the site at all and is not uncommon for people to forgot to disable this. Make sure you check this or else you will never be found!

6: Your competitors updated their site and now have an advantage over you.

So, of course, you do not have to go crazy and redesign your site every time any of your competitors change something about their site, BUT it is something to keep tabs on. Think about it this way: If they have made changes to improve their site which also improves their search result rankings then your site could end up being pushed down the page. That should not be the only thing that you focus on though; you should also think about what SEO adjustments you can make to get your rankings near the top and what your competitors are doing that you are not.

7: Your website is out of date and not using the latest tools.

95% of sites use third party tools in the backend that helps with functionality in some way. WordPress plugins, JavaScript libraries, third-party services to handle appointments or forms, etc. If these get ignored for too long, then your site’s functionality and security can be compromised. If this is something that you have issues with you should definitely ask the following questions:

• What exactly are these tools doing? Are they necessary for my site?
• Are these tools slowing my site down?
• How regularly do you need to update them? Are there new versions available now?
• If you don’t update the tool, does it break your site in some way?
• If you are too busy to manage it, should you pay a company like QuickFix to manage these updates for you?

What do you think? Does your website need a redesign? If any of these 7 scenarios resonate with you, DO NOT PANIC, but definitely start thinking about how to plan for this.

If you need help, QuickFix will guide you to make the correct decision for YOU. Our awesome web team will provide a FREE website audit, then will go through all of your options with you (even the options that don’t involve us).

Are you ready? Call us at (434) 220-5433, or send us a message via our Contact page. We would love to help take your business to the next level!