Should I Redesign My Website?
For most businesses, the website (and homepage in particular) forms the first impression for the majority of customers – your website needs to be easy to navigate, attractive, fast, and it needs to meet your visitors’ expectations. However, website redesign can be a time-consuming and costly exercise, so despite the enormous benefits it’s not a task to be taken lightly. In most businesses, the expense needs to be justified as part of the marketing budget, which is why it’s essential that the redesign is part of a larger strategy and has clear goals.
5 Signs You Need a Website Redesign
Your Site is Not Responsive
A responsive site is essential; between 30-40% of traffic to our sites comes from mobile devices, and this is set to eclipse desktop traffic in the next few years. If you are not catering to this audience you are losing a huge number of potential customers who simply bounce from your site and go to your competitors. 61% of mobile users will leave a site if they don’t see what they are looking for straight away, while 67% say that they’re more likely to buy from a mobile-friendly site. An unresponsive site can actually have long-term effects on your business, as 52% of mobile users say that a bad mobile experience makes them less likely to engage with a company in the future, while 48% say that if a site doesn’t work well on their smartphones it makes them feel like the company doesn’t care about their business.
Google have conducted extensive research on mobile users, and are improving search for this audience. In future, search results will even show whether or not a site is mobile friendly, which will give responsive or mobile-first sites the edge on the competition.
You Have a High Bounce Rate
Bounce rates can be affected by a number of things – your load time, your traffic sources, and your navigation can all have an impact on whether or not users want to stay on your site. However, old-fashioned design and poor usability are among the top reasons why sites lose conversions. If your website is too cluttered, has a lot of flash animation, or if it simply looks dated, it’s important to redesign to keep people on your site and present a professional image.
You Aren’t Getting Results
Even if you like your current design, if it isn’t delivering results there may be flaws that your customers see but your internal staff do not. Your website is there to appeal to your customers, not internal stakeholders, so they are the ultimate test of whether or not the design is good. If your conversion rates are poor, it may be an indicator that the design does not meet your visitors’ expectations and does not appeal to your key audience. Design changes can make a huge difference to conversion rates by adding clear CTAs and ensuring that the design reflects your brand personality.
Your Competitors Have Redesigned Their Site
While you don’t need to update your site every time a competitor does, having an older site can make a poor impression. 61% of internet users research products online, which involves looking at several website before making a decision (and comparing them). If your competitors have made significant improvements to their site, it can also improve their rankings and push your own site down in Google’s search results. The only way to remain competitive is to keep up pace and redesign your site, as well as pushing out content and continually improving your SEO.
You Want to Improve Your Content Strategy
Great content is essential if you want your website to work for you – it helps with everything from SEO to customer retention, which is why a good content strategy should be central to all of your digital marketing efforts. However, you also need to make sure that your visitors can find the content and read it easily once they’re on your site.
Some website templates don’t work with a lot of content per page, while others make it difficult to find deeper content or create defined user journeys through your site. A redesign will help customers find your content and incorporate different CTAs depending on where they are on the site.
Ultimately, the main aim of your website is to bring you business – if it’s not doing that job it may be time to consider a redesign.
