Why should I redesign my website?
June 17, 2018
Technology advances, design aesthetic changes, industry norms evolve, and business practices adapt. At the same time, your tastes change, your focus evolves, and your perspective adapts. All of these are reasons to redesign your website, but they’re certainly not the only reasons. Let’s look at some of the more common reasons a site needs a good refresh, shall we?
It’s broken
This is a no-brainer, really. If your site stops working due to a server or browser update, your site is old enough to need a redesign – really, this isn’t a question of “why should I redesign my site”, but “how quickly can the redesign be done?”.
It’s stale, old, or just plain ugly
Most research suggests redesigning a site every 13-36 months, with the average being a little over 2 years between redesigns. Design trends and popular aesthetics change over time – if your website looked awesome in the mid 90’s, chances are it doesn’t look as good now. Other research has shown that customers can (and often do) judge a company’s credibility based on the company’s website, and Google lists “expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness” as one of the most important factors to a high page quality rating.
Still more research shows that 75% of buying decisions are based on emotion – if your customer’s emotional response to your website is disgust or uncontrollable laughter, that sale is probably going to your competitor. Who, let’s face it, probably just rolled out the new version of their site.
Speaking of old sites, let’s look at the logical next reason to redesign your site:
It uses Flash
This is all about the technology – Flash was great back in the day before browsers could handle animation and advanced layout. With today’s modern, more powerful browsers that’s not a concern any more – JavaScript can do everything that Flash could do, and more. For instance, look good on mobile devices. Which Flash doesn’t do. At all.
The last time more people used a desktop computer to view a website than a mobile phone was in October 2016. Since then, more of the web has consistently been viewed on a phone than any other device. Which brings us to our next point…
It’s not responsive
Not only is most of the web viewed on a phone (http://gs.statcounter.com/platform-market-share/desktop-mobile-tablet), but Google considers a site’s responsiveness as a ranking signal. That means if your site doesn’t look good on a tablet or phone, your site won’t be on the first page of Google results.
Even if your customers succeed in finding your site on their phone, you’re asking a lot of them by making them use a non-responsive site on a mobile device. Of course, user experience applies to desktop surfers as well –
Customers find it hard to use
If a potential customer can’t find his or her way around your site, they’re going to leave – and not with kind parting words. Much like popular aesthetics, popular and common navigation schemes change over time. If your site structure hasn’t been updated, people are going to have trouble using it to find the information or products they want (and that you have).
Your business has changed
This is another no-brainer. If your business undergoes a change large enough to alter the logo, color palette, or business attitude and/or focus, you need to redesign the site to reflect that. After all, if your presence on the web doesn’t match your presence IRL your company’s credibility is eroded in the eyes of your customers. That, and your customers may just think they’re on the wrong site if the logo doesn’t match what’s on your business card.
It’s not ranking well in search engines
Search engine algorithms change daily, or so it seems. Keeping up is a full-time job, and that’s just content and keyword maintenance. Of increasing importance is accessibility and information proximity. Google specifically tells us to write copy for humans, not machines – the structure of that copy can go a long way towards making it more readable for both.
All of this leads us to the most important reason to redesign your site:
It’s not driving your business the way it should
A beautiful site that makes it easy for your customers to find what they’re looking for quickly, all the while being easy for you to update content when and how you want. This is the ultimate goal.