9 Signs You Need to Redesign Your Website

If you want your company to thrive for years to come, you must be willing to adapt. In the world of business, things are always evolving.

Staying on top of trends means you can take advantage of any opportunity that comes your way. Missing out on these opportunities and resisting change can lead to your business falling behind.

Nowhere else is this more true than when it comes to your company website. Your website is the beating heart of your business. It serves as a hub for everything your company stands for. A great website will inform readers and generate leads for your organization. By not having an up-to-date website, you are alienating potential customers from connecting with your brand.

Here are nine signs that your website is failing to live out its potential. If your website falls into many of these categories, it may be time for a redesign!

1. Your Website Looks Outdated

Any website design will look dated if enough time is allowed to pass. The technology available to website designers today was not available even a short time ago. Your company’s website from the ’90s may have been awesome for the time, but it just doesn’t hold up compared to what’s possible now.

Not even the biggest companies are immune to this. For example, this is what Apple’s website looked like in the early 2000s:

First impressions are crucial! If a potential buyer clicks on your website, they’ll be gone in a hurry if they find it to be outdated. You are leaving real money on the table by not updating your website’s appearance. To prevent this, you should take great strides to keep your website looking fresh. Most experts agree that any website should be overhauled every two to three years.

2. Your Website is not Mobile-Friendly

Mobile optimization needs to be a top priority for any business owners looking to improve their websites. The majority of web traffic nowadays is conducted on mobile devices. Therefore, your website needs to be viable on all platforms. Doing so will provide a better experience for your customers, increase your lead conversion rate and boost your Google rankings. If somebody visits your website on their smartphone, they won’t stick around for long once they realize they would have an easier time on somebody else’s website.

A site that is poorly optimized for mobile will often:

• Have slow load times
• Force the user to scroll horizontally
• Have images that don’t load
• Have poor text readability and formatting

If you have received numerous complaints about the mobile optimization of your site, it would be wise to get ahead of the issue by redesigning your website.

3. Your Website is Unresponsive and Slow

Thanks to the internet, we now have access to near-unlimited information at the press of a few buttons. The downside is that now peoples are impatient when they are forced to wait. If your website is slow, chances are most people won’t stick around. They’ll look elsewhere. Your website should be optimized for fast loading, and failing to do so might be hurting your business.

Many factors play into a website being unresponsive. It might be a result of unoptimized images. Large images use unnecessary bandwidth and can tank a website’s load time. Outdated software (like Flash, for instance) and messy code can slow your website down to a crawl.

Fixing a slow website means that those who find your website will stick around for longer.

4. Navigating Your Website is Challenging

A confusing website is one that won’t have a very high retention rate. A website can be challenging to navigate due to design blunders and technical defects. Design blunders occur when a website is designed with a style-over-substance approach. This can result in a website that is slow and frustrating to browse.

Your website needs to be a place where your ideal customers can go to find all the essential information about your brand. If it’s challenging to find key details about what your company represents, there may be a problem! It can become a big time-waster if you are always getting calls because someone can’t find basic information about your brand. A website redesign can make all that headaches go away in the long run.

5. Your Website is Suffering From Broken Links

Some websites falter in the technical department. Broken links can prevent someone from accessing pages of your website and hurt your SEO rankings. It can be aggravating to click on a page only to discover that the link is broken. As previously stated, people don’t like to wait for information. Anyone that encounters a broken website will likely go back to search results and try a different site. Once Google realizes that you have broken links, they will penalize your website and move it even further down search results. Older websites that were built on dated software often have a few broken links that hold them back.

If your website is challenging to navigate for any number of reasons, you should consider a redesign. People will stay on your website for longer and potentially make a purchase.

6. It is Difficult to Implement Minor Changes to Your Website

One of the main advantages of having a modern website is that you can make adjustments on the fly. You are always able to post to your blog, update your store, and correct any typos that you may happen to notice. Your website should be ever-evolving; as your brand changes with the times, so should your website. A website should serve as a location for all essential information related to your company.

Challenges may begin to arise when making minor changes to your website becomes more trouble than its worth. What should be a blessing for your brand can quickly become a nightmare if your site was built using dated software. Try thinking of an aging website like a very old house. Like a house, a website needs a strong foundation to be built upon. As time goes on, the cracks may begin to show. The floorboards might start to break down. Modern techniques used to build houses are refined and designed to last. The same can be said for website software. Continuing to build upon a bad foundation will lead to inevitable failure.

Remember, updating your website should be an easy, painless process. In this day and age, it has become much easier to manage your website yourself. Minor tweaks that would’ve once required a dedicated website specialist can now be performed in-house with relative ease. Continuing to use old website software will cause you to waste valuable time and money when that shouldn’t be the case.

7. You are Being Outranked by Competitors – Poor SEO

There are many possible reasons why your website is falling behind the competition. Calling SEO complex would be a severe understatement. Optimizing your website for search engines can be a confusing process. Google considers many factors when determining what will be shown in search results.

Google tends to penalize sites with a low retention rate. If people are only staying on your website for a few moments, that can signify that you need to change some things. They also look at the quality of your website’s content to determine if your site is providing valuable information. If your website is struggling to pick up leads, it’s likely that your website is not up to modern SEO standards and needs to be redesigned.

8. You are Not Converting Many Leads

We all know that a business needs sales to survive. Not generating revenue is the single most fundamental problem your business can go through. Some businesses depend entirely on their website to make money. If your website isn’t converting many sales, you won’t be able to stay open for very long.

If your business isn’t generating nearly as much revenue as it once did, it’s likely you need to overhaul your website.

9. Your Company’s Goals Have Changed

As an entrepreneur, your goals should always be evolving. When the internet became a fundamental part of running a business, it provided us with the luxury of being able to change direction. Back in the day, if you run a convenience store, you couldn’t exactly pivot from that. Online businesses have the flexibility to evolve drastically over time.

It is important to keep your website relevant and in line with the current goals of your business. Maybe your mission statement has changed since you first started! Or maybe you are looking to change the layout of the website to better fit your business’s new trajectory.

Whatever it may be, it’s important to stay true to your goals. Doing so will benefit you and your customers. Keeping everyone on the same page will prevent confusion and keep everyone happier.

Conclusion

Your website represents how your company will be perceived. Keeping your website up-to-date and modern will assure anyone who visits your site that you are the real deal. Failing to do so can cause you to lose out on sales, waste unnecessary resources, and hurt the company’s image. Redesigning your website every few years will help keep your brand current and successful.