10 Solid Business Reasons Your Website Needs a Redesign
September 14, 2015
If you’re not a website designer it’s hard to know when your website needs a change, or even how much of a change it needs. It may even feel that you’re updating it every five minutes and it can’t possibly need another change, but at the pace online marketing is progressing if you don’t make right changes at the right time you’ll lose marketing traction – and that means lost sales.
Here are ten solid business reasons that your website needs a redesign, or it will cost you money:
Make it Mobile Friendly
If your website isn’t mobile friendly then you
need to make it so – pronto. A
report from L2 showed that 69 percent of worldwide consumers aged 18 to 39 in households with incomes between $75,000 and $99,000 research products on smartphones, while 44 percent did so with tablets. Google even made it a priority as one of their
research criteria in their most recent algorithm changes so that it became a priority for website designers too.
Websites that aren’t mobile-friendly annoy users and that’s bad business for anyone. Consumers are doing more on mobile devices, including shopping and product research; when they do, users look for content to meet their on-the-go needs. A recent Google survey of mobile users found that 72 percent of mobile users say it’s important to them that websites are
mobile-friendly, yet 96 percent have visited a site that doesn’t work well on their device.
Almost three-quarters of respondents said they are more likely to revisit a mobile-friendly site. Users are five times more likely to abandon the task they are trying to complete if the site isn’t optimized for mobile use, with 79 percent saying they will go back to search and try to find another site to meet their needs.
Being mobile optimized is no longer an option and there’s no ‘halfway’, you either are or you aren’t, which means in search ranking stakes you’re also either seen, or invisible.
Incorporate Social Media
According to
NewsCred, People want to be in control of the content they receive and social media gives them that choice.
- 86% of people skip TV commercials.
- 44% of direct mail is never opened.
- 91% of people have unsubscribed from company emails they previously opted into.
- 72% of marketers think branded content is more effective than advertising in a magazine; 69% say it is superior to direct mail and PR.
- Nearly half (46%) of people say a website’s design is their number one criterion for determining the credibility of a company.
Forbes reported that 67 percent of marketers say increasing sales directly attributable to digital marketing campaigns is a top priority this year and that Internet advertising will make up 25% of the entire ad market in 2015, and social media is the powerful currency of online marketing. If you do not have social media intrinsically incorporated into your website, you need to. Not only are the majority of sales enquiries started on social media, most of them are researched there. Platform owners are realising this and the new ‘rollout’ for every platform for this year has included a purchasing app. Now users can buy directly from your social media.
Online marketing is the new black, so get where the social media users are and make sure your website maximises your social media incorporation.
You Aren’t Getting the Results You Want
Tracking the performance of your website is important as you need to know how your website is performing to be able to evaluate its efficacy. Every app or web tool has its own analytics and it’s a case of tracking them and finding which are of use to you.
If you don’t know how to use the analytics or don’t value them, here’s a couple of infographics that will help:
When you can analyse if your website is working, then you can track when the time for a redesign is right. When it stops bringing in leads, you need to find out what is happening via your analytics, then change things and keep the marketing power moving forward.
Add New Functionality
Your website needs to move with the times as new technology will continue coming out as innovators and marketers push the technical and creative boundaries. If you find you need to add a new function and can’t, it’s time for a redesign. Your competitors will be embracing the
new technology and leap frogging ahead of your website if you don’t keep your pages technologically versatile. Where functionality is concerned, there is no option B.
Make it More User Friendly
There is nothing more irritating than a website that has a confusing navigation, slow loading media and illogical content pathways. These are the kind of things that will cause a user to leave a site, and not return, no matter how enticing the content.
These concerns can only be address on a technical level which means a redesign, but to be honest, a redesign is a great way to evaluate what is working about your site and build on the positives to make the whole user experience captivating. You want people to come in to your site and browse a while. So grab the chance to resolve all the past problems and present users with a website that will ‘WOW’ them with awesomeness the next time they visit.
Incorporate Rebranding
Commissioning a rebrand is an exercise of giving your company image a complete facelift so it makes sense to update your website branding to create a seamless, unified image. Whilst branding is a very visible change, not all the adjustments that need to happen are easily seen. Some of the labeling, coding and tagging will also need to be changed to accommodate the new design and this can only be successfully achieved by a redesign.
Once again, a company rebrand is a great chance to give the whole website an overhaul. A rebrand is all about image, and so is your website. Why only change one aspect and expect to impress? When someone goes to an ex’s wedding they don’t just buy a new hat. They buy a complete outfit right down to the underwear – why? So that the ex will know what awesome really looks like.
It’s the same with the opportunity for a website redesign by website designers. Make use of it.
Keep technology Up to Date
Here is a simplified version of all the considerations when building a website:
Website designers have a complex remit of ideas, technicalities and systems to work through so it’s no surprise that programmers and innovators are constantly creating and upgrading technology to make the job easier. This is great news as it increases the efficiency of your site, keeps it in competition with the rest of the industry, and gives you extra capacity to add a few creative flourishes of your own – if you have the technology to keep up to date with it. If you don’t, you
need a redesign.
Web technologies will not get more ‘simple’, complex is the only way it can go so it make sense to be prepared for it. No successful website will escape an
upgrade in its life, so you might as well take the bull by the horns and get your website ready to run all the technology it needs to meet the needs, and expectations of your audience.
It’s Looks Outdated
This one seems like a no brainer, but you’ll be amazed how many companies look at the bottom line and ‘hang on’ to an outdated website hoping it will come back into fashion this week, and then wondering why their website isn’t achieving any of the goals set for that quarter.
If you don’t invest in a good looking website you’ll miss out. Why?
- First impressions are 94% design-related. Don’t get me wrong, quality content matters. A lot. But even the best content is rendered powerless when it’s embedded in poor design. Studies of user behavior have found that visual appeal and website navigation have the biggest influence on people’s first impressions of your brand.
- Positive first impressions lead to higher satisfaction. The initial impression that a user gets from your site can have a priming effect on how they perceive future interactions with your business. Research shows that positive priming can boost user satisfaction and, as you might expect, negative first impressions put significant drag on user satisfaction.
- First impressions can last for years. And there’s an abundance of research to prove it. One study found that the NBA players’ careers are determined by their position in the draft, regardless of their on-court performance. Another study finds that subsequent impressions, no matter how contradictory, can never make up for the first impression – bringing a more than literal meaning to the saying that “you never get a second chance to make a first impression.”
Your bottom line needs to invest in the looks of your website if you want it to increase.
Lack of Calls to Action
Every page needs a call to action, or why is it there? You need to be constantly optimizing on the interest generated with the content on your page. That doesn’t mean you go for the hard sell every time, but inviting prospective customers to join an email list, sign up for newsletter or download a white paper is a great way to engage your audience without challenging them to buy. As you gain their trust and loyalty they will be lead into your sales funnel where you can take them to a sale.
If you don’t have calls to action, or your
calls to action are weak, it’s time to redesign and make them strong. Providing a lead with great content is not enough to make them a customer. You have to
invite them in and take part. Calls to action are the way you do that, without piling on sales pressure.
It’s Never All Up at One Time
It stands to reason that if your website continually limps from one technical crisis to another and is never all up at the same time to be used by customers, you are in desperate need of a redesign. Period. If you website isn’t up, people can’t visit it. You won’t save any money by being invisible, quite the opposite. You’ll lose it.
Take a good look at your website and see it suffers from any of these problems. If it is, it will be costing you sales.
Take the opportunity to introduce all the things you wanted for your website to do, and create something that can be useful for all the needs of your expanding company.
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