Four Signs you Need to Re-Design Your Site

Website maintenance is very similar to the upkeep of a stores physical location and appearance; time consuming, expensive, but a necessity if you want to keep a positive customer experience. The webs framework and aesthetics are always changing and at a rapid pace, making it easy for your site to become outdated and in urgent need of updating. Not only that but users are now browsing the web from a wider variety of devices, an outdated site wont load well on a mobile if it’s not responsive.

Search engines are constantly updating their algorithms to factor in a website’s design and usability in their ranking. Think of the internet as a giant shopping centre and your website is your storefront, the better presented the store the more customers will enter. So a more up-to-date website will lead to more click conversions and customers. However, knowing if your site is in need of a complete re-design or not can be tricky. I have listed four signs that it might be time to invest in a new design.

1. Your site looks outdated.

Other than the load speed, the general design and look of your website plays a huge roll in a user’s first impression. If it looks outdated, it’s more than likely diminishing your authority and can cause users to abandon the page. For example, low quality images, solid colour backgrounds and large blocks of texts may have been popular back in 2001 but as technology has progressed, what the users want has also changed.

When coming up with a new design for your site it’s important to think about the services or information you’re offering, and then figure out what design would work best to communicate that. Will it be a clean, simplistic look like Google? Or a more action driven design, focusing on display s lot of information like a blog? Once you have that in mind, take a look at the websites of your main competitors, then put yourself in the shoes of a user. What on their site is keeping you there? What grabs your attention? Take notes, things like this will help you strategize your new design.

2. Updating the content is difficult.

Having, or being in direct contact with the person who has, the authority to manage your content is a must for modern web design. If updating or adding new content on your website is either a difficult task or can’t even be done without a lengthy process involving contacting your developer and waiting for a response, then it is time for a re-design. Not having a site with a user friendly CMS (Content Manager System) is a key indicator that you need a complete re-vamp.

When working with a design company on your website, or even before you decide to work with them, ask them if you can have administrative access. Stress the importance of having CMS access so that you can update your content when you want and not having to phone them every time you want to make a slight change. Most companies will be using user friends CMS’s like Joomla or WordPress.

3. If your site has a high bounce rate.

If you’re paying attention to your SEO through analytics, then you’ll be able to monitor stats such as the click through rates and bounce rates of your website. Bounce rates indicate how fast someone leaves your site, you can read more about them in one of our earlier blogs posts here. People often click off the site for a variety of reasons including slow loading speed, broken links or poor design.

It could be a good idea to write up a checklist of things that could cause a high bounce rate, then go through your site and make sure that everything is sorted. If you’ve done this and you are still seeing a high bounce rate you might have to take a step back and look at your site. Is it user friendly?

4. Your site isn’t mobile friendly

I know I somewhat mentioned this at the start, but I can’t stress the importance of having a mobile responsive website enough. It has been reported that more website searches these days are being made on mobile devices than desktops and with a huge number of those searches resulting in a purchase or share, you can’t afford to miss out.

If it isn’t already, mobile optimization should be a top priority when you come to redesign your website. Having a website that is mobile responsive opens you up to a much greater audience and search engines will rank you higher for having so.