​​9 Signs it's Time to Update Your Website Design

This article contains:

1. You’re embarrassed to give out your URL
2. Your website looks outdated or unprofessional
3. All your competitors have better websites
4. Your website doesn’t reflect your brand or values
5. Your website is hard to navigate or doesn't provide the
   information visitors need.
6. Your website is not mobile-friendly (or responsive)
7. You’re website loads slowly
8. Small changes are difficult or impossible to make.
9. You are getting poor analytics results

1) You’re embarrassed to share your URL

Your website is the online face of your company and you should be proud to have it represent you. If you’re not, that’s a clear sign it’s time for a new site.

2) Your website looks outdated
or unprofessional

It may seem like a small thing, but your website is the first impression people have of your company—and if it looks outdated or unprofessional they might not stick around to find out more. 

In terms of bad design you can think off:

• Inconsistency in style across all pages
• Generic fonts that everyone uses
• Non responsive design (not mobile friendly)
• Images/illustrations with low resolutions
• Not making use of color
• Unclear call to actions
• No animations / interactive elements to bring the design alive
• Bad site architecture and page compositions witch leads to unclear navigaion

Google recently even suggested that poor design could hurt a website's search rankings. If it doesn’t meet certain expectations for quality.

In an increasingly competitive landscape design is becoming more and more important. It gives you the opportunity to differentiate yourself, communicate your values and create meaningful connections. So it's not something to skimp on.

3) All your competitors have better websites 

If your competitors have websites that look better and provide more value. You’re going to be at a significant disadvantage because they will most likely appear above you in the search results and take all the traffic. If you're lagging behind, consider an update to propel your business to the front of the pack.

4) Your website doesn’t reflect your brand or values

Your website is more than just a place to post your products and services—it’s an opportunity to tell your story. Your website should reflect who you are as a company, not just what you do. You need to stand out from the crowd with a website that clearly communicates your values. 

This is best achieved through a brand strategy process in which you dive deep into how you want to position yourself as a brand.

5) Your website is hard to navigate or doesn't provide the information visitors need

You don’t want to give your visitors a headache when they visit your website, so make sure it’s easy to find what they’re looking for and provide all the relevant information. Don't assume that because you know how to navigate through your site that everyone else will too.

If they can’t find what they’re looking for, they will likely leave and never return. For example, if someone searches for a specific product or service, make sure you have a page dedicated to that item so users don’t have to click through multiple pages just to learn about it.

6) Your website is not mobile-friendly
or responsive 

If you’re not making your website mobile-friendly, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity. In fact, Google has begun penalizing websites that aren’t mobile-friendly sinds 2017. 

If your website isn’t mobile-friendly, you risk dropping in the search engine rankings. So fewer people will visit your site—and that means fewer sales. If you want to avoid this penalty and drive more traffic to your site, make sure it’s mobile-friendly.

You can ensure that your site is optimized for mobile by making sure it loads quickly, uses responsive design, and has content that is easy to read on a small screen. Use Google mobile friendly test to see if your website is mobile friendly.

7) You’re website loads slowly

Every second counts, because 40% of consumers will wait no more than three seconds before abandoning a site. And Google will prioritize other sites over yours if it’s too slow. 

There are a lot of factors affecting your website speed so the best thing to do is use GoogleSpeed Insights to analyze what the best ways are to improve your page load speed. 

In most cases compressing your images would give you the most significant gains. I would recommend you use a free, lossless compression tool like TinyPNG. And compress your images to WebP for the best results. 

8) Small changes are difficult or impossible to make

Making small changes or updates to your site should be easy to accomplish for anyone on your staff.

If your website is built on a platform that is difficult to work with, or requires a third party to make even the simplest updates, consider migrating your website to webflow or another website builder with an easy-to-use content management system (CMS).

9) You are getting poor analytics results

It’s important to stay on top of your Google Analytics results if you want to understand how your site is performing. 

It’s not all about the number of visitors to your website; it’s more important to know how your visitors are interacting.

If you have low average session duration this means you struggle to get people to stay on your website. This could be because your content isn’t relevant enough to your visitors or it's a design issue. In case of a design issue you should focus on increasing reading flow by breaking up large pieces of text, adding video, quotes, or images.

Your bounce rate shows how often someone comes to your site and then leaves without interacting with the page. The lower your bounce rate, the better, but 40-50% is about average. Improving your bounce rate often starts by determining which pages people are bouncing off of the most. Then you can focus your efforts on improving the pages that suffer the most.

With goal conversions you measure how often users complete specific actions. Think off newsletter subscriptions, contact form submissions or online purchases. If you're struggling with your goal conversions, in most cases the value proposition and call to action aren't clear enough. A heat map tool like Hotjar can help you track where your site interaction is happening. These tools can give you valuable intel on how far people scroll, where their cursor hovers the most, and where they click the most often. 

Conclusion 

A successful website is all about great user experience. If your site is difficult to navigate and doesn’t offer engaging, valuable content, your users will leave. While small tweaks can improve the visitor experience on an existing site, a new website designed with user experience at the forefront is often the best solution.

If you think it's time for a change, then it probably is! Luckily I can help you achieve the results you want from your website.

I’ll help you to create a custom website that reflects your brand, showcases your products and services, and drives more traffic to your website. I’ll also help you get the most out of your new site by teaching you how to update content, add products or services, and manage changes over time. Read more about my service here.

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