Website Redesign Because First Impressions Last
Your audience’s first impression of your business is based almost exclusively on your website … so redesigning your website isn’t a task to be taken lightly. It requires a good deal of thought, time, and potentially money, but the upside can be enormous.
It is important to note here that “redesign” does not necessarily mean you need to change every single one of your branding and graphic design elements. In fact, web redesigns can just entail making functional modifications that help your website work better and assist you in reaching your marketing goals. After all, your website is one of the foundational elements of your marketing strategy, right?
For marketing to be effective, every touch point with a prospective customer must be in alignment. That includes your website, which is one of your most important salespeople.
When considering a website redesign, which is your main storefront and a key player in your lead generation efforts, you should consider the following 17 reasons to redesign your website.
1. You aren’t getting the results you want.
Is your website gorgeous, functional, and pixel-perfect? Awesome! But if you still aren’t getting the results you want, it is just useless web real estate. Your website exists to build your customer base, and your data should show you are trending toward that goal.
If you aren’t happy with your results, it’s time to redesign. Examining your site’s conversion rates — visitor-to-lead and lead-to-customer typically being the most important — can provide you with a clear idea of what needs to be adjusted on it.
Here are a few questions you should ask yourself to guide your redesign process:
– Does your call-to-action convert visitors into leads and customers?
– Do your landing pages inspire people to learn more by digging deeper, or are they simply aesthetically pleasing pages that convey little value?
– Is your site too text-heavy or riddled with corporate speak?
– Does your site’s look and feel match your company’s voice and speak directly to your target audience?
2. You are embarrassed by your website
If you are embarrassed to give out your website address because you are afraid of what your prospective customer might think of it, it may be time to consider a website redesign. I come across many business owners at networking events who simply don’t want anyone to visit their website because they are embarrassed. They know that they need a redesign and they are planning to get around to it, they just haven’t yet.
A bad website can hurt your business far more than not having one at all, because of the perception it gives of your company.
3. Your website no longer accurately reflects your brand.
To be taken seriously and to be considered a professional, credible business, it’s extremely important for your website to portray a strong brand image that represents your company accurately and captures the essence of your brand. A stronger brand image has the ability to take small businesses and entrepreneurs and make them stand out among their larger competitors, leveling the playing field.
Ask yourself questions like:
– How often do you modify your marketing strategy?
– Do marketing strategy updates affect your conversion funnel?
Of course, if you haven’t altered your marketing strategy in a while, it might not be your website that is the problem. 🙂
If your website’s purpose has changed, update its layout to be more in line with your goals. For instance, if you’re new goals are now to provide more lead generation content (perhaps some “how-to” blog posts and ebooks), ensure you include CTAs on your homepage and other popular webpages.
4. Your website is outdated compared to the new design trends.
With design trends changing every few years, a website that is two or three years old can easily seem outdated when compared to a competitor who has a website that is up to date with the latest design trends.
The latest design trends now call for a flat minimalist design utilizing simple patterns that are two dimensional with a clean, modern look that caters to mobile interfaces as well as desktops. It takes a simple, minimalistic approach to design, which has been embraced by many companies, including Microsoft, Apple, Starbucks etc. With mobile usage on pace to overcome desktop usage, complex designs with large images, make it more difficult for visitors to browse your website. Flat design makes it easier.
5. Your website is not responsive.
Responsive web design makes a website easily adaptable to fit the screen sizes of any mobile device. In reviewing your analytics, if you discover that a large chunk of your website visitors are originating from a mobile device it is time for a responsive design.
Your website visitors may be using different mobile devices such as an iPad, iPhone, Tablet, Samsung Note etc. A responsive design makes it possible for visitors to navigate your website easily across all these unique devices, providing a great user experience. Furthermore, Google is now telling searchers whether your website is mobile friendly or not with their new mobile friendly test. This will inevitably affect your credibility, click-through rate, lead generation and sales.
6. You are losing mobile visitors.
If your website is not mobile friendly and a large portion of your visitors are originating from a mobile device, you may be losing visitors and experiencing a higher bounce rate than usual. This will no doubt directly affect your bottom line, because it will cost you valuable leads. An effective website redesign will address this issue and help you reduce your bounce rate and increase conversions.
7. Your website does not reflect the expansion of your capabilities and offering.
If the list of services that you provide has grown and your old website does not reflect the full suite of services that you now provide, this can result in customers going elsewhere to get a service that you provide because they weren’t aware that you offered that service. By redesigning your website you can expand your list of services to include all of the services you provide, so that each visitor and customer is aware of everything you offer.
8. You want to incorporate a better content strategy.
Having fantastic content on your site can improve everything from customer retention to SEO — and with continuing changes to the algorithms of search engines, you’d be smart to implement a solid content plan. That said, quality content is useless if your visitors can’t readily find it.
So, if you are planning to make some big changes to your content strategy (perhaps boosting your blog production?), a web redesign may be wise. That way, your great posts, ebooks, and other content are easily findable (and your leads database will grow the way you want it to).
If you’re on the fence about a redesign in the name of your content strategy, ask yourself these questions:
– Can your customers easily find your content?
– Does your content incorporate calls-to-action?
– Can the search engines find and index your content?
9. Your website is not optimized for search engines.
Perhaps your website was built utilizing a template or your urls are dynamic. A website redesign can help you improve your site architecture so that it is more SEO friendly. A website redesign can help you improve your coding and make your website as a whole more SEO friendly utilizing custom page urls, H1, H2, H3 Tags, Page Titles and Alt Tags by utilizing a more advanced Content Management System that gives you greater flexibility and makes optimizing your website easier.
10. Your website currently does not support a content marketing strategy.
Implementing content marketing as part of your marketing strategy can help you build trust, establish credibility and increase traffic and leads. If you are planning to implement a content strategy and your current website architecture wasn’t built with a content strategy in mind, a website redesign can make it easier for visitors to find your content, for you to cultivate a lead database and implement marketing automation.
A new website will help you to set a better foundation to get you on the right path to successful content marketing.
11. Your website is built on outdated technology.
Perhaps your website is still built in flash which is difficult for search engines to read and difficult to access on mobile devices, or maybe your website is running on plugins that have not been updated in years. Updating your website with the latest technology and plugins will help your website to perform better and be more efficient, providing a better user experience for your visitors.
12. You want greater control over updating your website.
Having greater control over managing and updating your website means that you can deploy marketing campaigns at a faster rate because you don’t have to wait on someone to make the changes for you. Having this capability allows you to test more landing pages and ascertain what is and isn’t working for you at a faster pace, helping you to see results faster.
13. You want to improve your website lead generation.
A new design that is streamlined with the right calls to action (CTA) allows you to better optimize your website for lead generation. Implementing calls to action across each website page, including on your blog, so that you are taking greater advantage of every opportunity to convert visitors into leads will significantly contribute to your bottom line.
14. Improve your website security.
Perhaps one of the greatest concerns of our time is cyber security, and small businesses and entrepreneurs are just as susceptible to website hacking and viruses as larger businesses. If your website was built years ago and hasn’t been updated since, you are at greater risk for malware and hacking.
15. Your website just doesn’t work.
This might seem obvious, but you’ve probably stumbled on websites every now and then that are dysfunctional, to put it lightly. Your site might not be on that level … but it might still not be as user-friendly as it could be. The truth is there can be elements of a site that aren’t effective — and you may not realize they’re making your website less effective.
Functionality should be a paramount focus for you — if it’s not, your traffic and lead gen efforts could suffer. How you — and others you ask to test the website — answer these questions might point you in the clear direction of a redesign:
– Can a visitor readily find the most basic things on your site, such as contact information?
– Is your site navigation confusing?
– Is your important content hidden?
– Are your product and service offers completely up-to-date?
16. Your competitors changed their website.
Obviously, you don’t need to give your website an overhaul every time one of your competitors changes theirs. Having said that, if they make changes that improve their rankings substantially and end up pushing you down in searches, it’s likely time to make some alterations to your website.
If you spend some time on a competitor’s website and realize it could meet your goals far better than your own website does, it’s time to roll up your sleeves and get busy. Maintaining an edge in search shouldn’t be your only goal, but if you’re not near the top of SERPs because competing business is keeping you from there, analyze what SEO adjustments you can make to your existing website.
17. Your third-party tools are outdated.
If your website is like most out there, you have embedded third-party tools that improve its functionality, such as shopping cart widgets. But, if some (or all) of these tools on your website aren’t up to modern functionality standards, you’re best off updating them. Ask yourself these questions to determine whether you need to replace or remove some tools:
– How are these third-party tools working?
– Are they slowing your site speed down?
– Are new-and-improved versions now available?
Nothing drives customers away like third-party tools that are outdated in terms of function or design or just don’t work correctly, so make the move to more a modern one that will not only appeal to your visitors, but also turn them into leads.
It is easy to bet complacent when your website is working and its bringing you business, but it is also important to maximize the opportunities you have. Great marketing means continual improvement in order to increase sales, maximize your return on investment and lower your cost per acquisition.
Identifying with one of the above shouldn’t cause you to go into panic mode and dive deep into a redesign, but realizing a few hit close to home might mean it’s time to get cracking on a new design.
Do you think you’re in need of a website redesign? Contact Us today to schedule your FREE, no-obligation consultation!