A question we commonly hear is how often should a business redesign their website? That’s good question, and one that you may be asking right now.
A website redesign can be a challenge, making many businesses put off a redesign until they’re forced into it. This can happen for various reasons. But how do you really know when it’s time to redesign you site?
Generally Speaking…
The best advice is to expect your website will need to be updates about every 1.5 to 2.5 years. This is a rough estimate and an average time span that many companies seem to use.
However, not all websites may need a complete redesign within this time period. On the other hand, others may need to be updated sooner.
Reasons to Redesign Your Site
Here are a few reasons to determine if your website needs to be redesigned or not.
1). Out of Date
It can happen that a site’s design becomes dated, which can mean the site looks and feels out of date. Think of this way. What happens when visitors come to your site and find antiquated design elements and functionality? If they find your site isn’t able to provide a product or service they need, site visitors will quickly leave the site and head over the competitor’s site.
Take a good look at your site right now. Does it contain design elements that were from the 90s or early 2000s? Then it may be time for an update.
While the expense of updating your site may feel exorbitant, think of it as an investment instead. The reason is that if the website is kept up to date, then site visitors will have a much more pleasant experience. Things will look and work as expected, which makes for a familiarity that web users prefer. Rather than having a high bounce rate, a site redesign may mean more people staying on the site to get information, as well as buying your products and services. This is an investment in your overall business, not just a site update.
And it may not be necessary to do a complete overhaul of your site. Instead, there may be a few places on the site that need a little sprucing up. This may mean that your homepage needs to be updated, or even that your content needs to be updated a bit. So, it may not be the entire site that needs to be redesigned.
2). Doesn’t Function Correctly
As mentioned earlier, if a site doesn’t work as it should, visitors will soon become frustrated and leave. Here, consider the different aspect of your site by asking these questions:
- Is your content easily reached? Does it take too much clicking to get to the most important content?
- Does your site have broken links that go nowhere, or lead to error and 404 pages?
- Does your site use responsive design?
- Are site visitors finding the information they want? Can they find it easily & quickly?
- Are you able to handle updates and changes to product information and other areas of the site?
- Is your business falling behind competitors? How does your website compare to theirs?
- Are you targeting the right target audience? Is your site geared to their device preferences?
- Is your site ranking low in Google? Are you appearing on the first page of search results?
The questions you’ve answered with a “no,” then it’s time to consider a complete site redesign. Your business is suffering with a website that’s outdated and isn’t able to function correctly or make site visitors happy.
Planning a Redesign
Here are some tips for planning a site redesign:
Review target audience: these are the site visitors who will ultimately convert into paying customers. These are people who are loyal and look forward to purchasing new products from their favourite companies. You may need to conduct customer interviews and gather website data to learn who to target, but this is a crucial exercise for the success of your business and website.
Review competitors: this is where you review competitor websites to see how they work and what doesn’t work. Pay close attention to website design elements, use of content, scrolling vs clicking, product descriptions, and more. Try to discover why they are succeeding and converting well.
Make user experience the priority: after going to all the trouble to find your target audience, the goal is to ensure your site meets their expectations. You want them to have a great experience on their site, so it’s important to review the functionality they need, which devices they prefer, along with the type of content they want.
Make Your Site Future-Friendly
As you plan the site’s redesign, it’s essential to ensure the site is future friendly. This way you’ll get more out of your website after making the investment to redesign and update. Here are some aspects to consider when planning your site’s design for the future:
Structure: ensure navigation is fast and easy. For instance, the design and flow of pages should be logical and provide the information site visitors need, as well as making it easy to access products and services. Also make it easy for visitors and current customers to find your business contact information on the site.
Easy & simple: here, make sure your site’s design is simple and easy to access. And remember to make it user-friendly for your target audience. Don’t forget to design the site with your target audience’s device preferences in mind, too. In addition, you may want to make sure that you and your team can easily update and manage the site from now on.
SEO: your redesigned site should be optimised for the search engines. This means page loading speeds need to be fast, as well as having a low bounce rate, and more. The goal is to show up on page one of Google’s search results, which will increase site traffic and conversion numbers.
Sales: the redesigned site should make it easy for site visitors to make an order. In addition, the site should make it easy for your company to process the orders, ship them off, and more. The entire sales process for site users and for your team needs to be fast and easy.
Scalability: as business grows, your site will need to keep up. This will mean using responsive design to accommodate all types of devices and screen sizes, which make the site easily accessible to everyone.
Include social: don’t forget to include social media when redesigning your site. Remember, social media is like free advertising. It’s also a great way to stay in contact with customers and even potential customers.
A website redesign isn’t easy, we understand. However, it’s best to see this as a way to invest in your company. When you redesign with a plan, you’ll have a better site that keeps loyal customers coming back, and one that successfully converts new visitors into paying customers.
