Your website is the primary online marketing tool for your business. Whatever impression visitors have on your business, your website will play a very important part in it. That’s why it’s only right that you think about redesigning your website.
A website redesign, however, involves a significant amount of investment on your part. Redesigning your website requires a lot of thought, time and of course, money, if you’re hiring someone else to do the redesign for you. Then again, when you have the following reasons for redesigning your website, doing just that could prove to be a wise investment.
1. The results you want are not happening
You can have the most beautifully-designed website in the world, but when the results you want just aren’t happening, all you have is a website with all the bells and whistles but not much else.
Before deciding on a website redesign, you need to get a clear idea of what’s stopping your website from getting the results that you want. Are your landing pages not conveying enough value to make visitors want to explore some more? Are your calls-to-action or CTAs effective enough to deliver conversions? Is it loaded with too much text that can turn off visitors? Get these questions answered and you’ll know what adjustments to make when redesigning your website.
2. You’ve learned what works and what doesn’t
For all the years that your website has gone live, surely you’ve picked up a few things along the way that made you realise your site needs a bit of an adjustment to be more effective. However, when this is your reason for a website redesign, we recommend that you approach it in an iterative manner rather than have one huge goal for the task. This way, you will be able to plan accordingly and use whatever information you have collected to implement what truly works on your website.
3. Your website is not yet mobile-friendly
Considering that more than 17% of web traffic comes from smartphones and tablets, you are certainly missing out if your website isn’t responsive. Mobile users will always want a great user experience when surfing the Internet on their gadgets, and if you’re not doing anything to address that, chances are, you’re losing leads and inevitably, customers.
4. Your marketing goals have changed
Marketing goals do change, and when your website is no longer aligned with these goals, a website redesign is certainly up in the air. However, you don’t have to keep on redesigning your website every single time your goals change, because those changes, in all probability, are still in line with the purpose of the website. Only when the marketing goals and the site clearly follow diverging paths should you start thinking about redesigning your website.
5. You have a better content strategy in mind
When you are planning to implement an improved content strategy, you really should consider redesigning your website. If anything, the website redesign should be done in a way that will make your blog posts, ebooks, videos, pictures and other content a whole lot easier to find. Post great content and not make it easy for visitors to find it, and your content will be rendered useless.
6. Your third-party tools aren’t up to scratch
Third-party tools are a natural part of business websites. After all, shopping cart widgets and the like improve the functionality of the site. However, if they’re not really working the way you intended or if they’re slowing your site down, you would do well to update the site. Outdated third-party tools turn a lot of people off, which may be the reason why you’re not getting the results that you want.
7. Your website just isn’t working
Are the most basic things on your site and your important content easy to find? Is navigating the site a piece of cake? Do you constantly update your product and service offers? Is it generally user-friendly? If your honest answer to all these questions is a big no, then your website just isn’t working, and it certainly is up for a website redesign.
8. Your competitors changed their site for the better
Truth be told, you don’t have to redesign your website every single time your competition changes its look. However, if their rankings and conversions shoot up because of the redesign and your website is finding itself at the lower pages of the search results pages, perhaps a website redesign should be in order.
9. Redesigning your website to shake things up
When was the last time you updated your site’s design? If it’s too far in the past you can’t even accurately remember, maybe it’s time for a website redesign. Take a look at your site and if you think it’s starting to look a bit tired, you can shake things up by redesigning your website just for the sake of redesigning your website. A fresh look can prove to be exciting not only for you but for your audience as well.
Just like cars look clearly old-fashioned after a while, the same (if not more) holds true for websites. Your visitors can tell if your website is current standard or yesterday’s fare – and you definitely don’t want to appear like an outdated business, do you?
Always keep in mind that redesigning your website doesn’t have to mean you will have to change every single element in it. If anything, redesigning your website should actually be about making functional modifications that will help site work better and get better results.