Have you got a niggling feeling in your gut that your website isn’t quite right? If you’re nodding then it’s likely a sign that it’s time to give your website an overhaul. You may need to redesign your site for a few reasons, but most comes down to aesthetics (the visual design), user experience, and how easy the website is for you to maintain and promote.
If you’re worried about diving into a redesign on just a gut feeling – because a redesign can be costly and is often time-consuming – run through the questions below to find out if your cut feeling is right.
Does your site look outdated?
There are certain industries you’ll come across online where even the big players have old website designs that look like they haven’t been updated since 2003. That may not turn off long-term customers, or even stop users finding the information and products, but it is starting to look unprofessional. Why?
Because it’s so easy nowadays for just about anyone to get a website up and running that looks just as good as a website for a business a hundred times the size. Often, you can’t tell the difference between a site for a company of 3 or a site for a company of 300. Studies are now showing that people judge a business’s trustworthiness by how the website looks – the better it looks and the easier it is to contact them (and often review them), the lower the barrier to purchase or inquiry. You’ve likely made this kind of judgment yourself, so it’s important to keep your user in mind.
Do you date your content?
While we’re talking about being outdated – do you put dates on your content? How many times have you searched for advice online and not clicked on or quickly bounced away from an article because it hasn’t been updated since it was published in 2014? This isn’t just important to your users who want the most up-to-date content, but also to Google. Google (and likely other search engines) now note dates on your site and in your URL and may penalize the content for being old if it’s more than a few years old. It’s best to update your content frequently or if the content is evergreen take the dates off the page and out of the URL.
Is your site responsive?
“Responsive” means your site can modify its appearance for other devices like phones and tablets. If you don’t know, simply try shrinking your browser window and if it’s responsive it should change as it gets smaller, or simply open your site on your phone.
If your answer is “no”, it’s crucial you start thinking about implementing a site redesign. Not only is this important for making sure your site visitors can view your site properly regardless of what device they’re on (and it’s important to remember how many people browse on their phone and tablets instead of laptops and desktops), but search engines are starting to penalize websites that aren’t mobile-ready. If you want your site to continue to (or start to) rank in search engine results, you need to make sure it’s ticking this box.
