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Are you unsure of your existing website needs a redesign? Use our checklist to help you decide…
To remain modern and up to date your website should be updated often, including the back-end system, it is build on to keep it secure. Web design and development best practices and standards adapt fast and if you want to maintain a quality online presence, then your website if created over 5 or 10 years ago will be massively different to a website now in 2022. It is critical then as you the business owner makes sure your website stays up with the times and doesn’t appear old and out of date to potential customers looking to use your services or products.
If you are unsure if your existing website needs updating, don’t worry, our checklist here will help you make your mind up if now is the right time for a change. We are here to help you so if you have any other questions or feel you want some advice on your own website, then get in touch with us.
Web pages slow to load?
In 2022 web users are more impatient that ever before. If your site is taken too long to load then they won’t wait around, and will just move on to one of your competitors websites. You should be aiming for your site to load up within a couple of seconds.
You should test every page of your existing website for both desktop and smart mobile phones. If any pages are taken longer than a few seconds to load, then you should think about getting a new website. Not only will you be losing out on new customers, but in terms of your ranking in Google, this takes into account your website loading speed when deciding where to place your site in search engines. So if you have a slow running website this could be costing you much more new business than you know.
Outdated Design & Graphics
To complete online your website needs to look modern. No matter if the page loads fast, or you have a great user friendly flow menu structure and process customers will be put off by old looking type, graphics and images that belonged in the past. Some examples of these are:
• Old dated fonts used on the website, or silly fonts like brush script etc.
• Homepage having lots of small, low res images used
• Old software used on your website like ‘flash’ animations – which are not supported by modern browsers
• Pages are not responsive, so don’t change to suit device viewing them
• Text content on web pages too small
• Website layout cramped into a fixed small width size
This includes you keeping the website up to date content wise too. It is so important to let your customers see you are active on your site by updating news blogs, events, work case studies and project updates that are current to what you are doing. This includes your social media platforms too. Viewers are more likely to switch off from you if the business looks old and unmaintained. You need to for this and active on your website, to show your viewers it is being updated regularly.
Is your site responsive?
Smart phones have changed the world over the last ten years and there has been a massive shift over to web use of mobiles. They have become more powerful and on the whole there are much more viewers of websites now on mobile phones compared to desktop or laptops. You as a business owner can’t hide from this important key part of any successful website, and if your existing website doesn’t support mobile users and only works well on desktop view then this needs to change right away.
We do still see times when desktop viewers are still the majority visitors to a website. For example, in a B2B website the business looking for your service or product is still mostly viewing then via their desktop as they are sitting working in the office, shop or factory etc. But for B2C, then this totally changes the other way as your customers are more likely to be looking for you via their mobile phones.
Some important factors that ensure you give all your website viewers the best experience are:
• Having mobile images load correctly and are optimised for online browsing on these devices. Low image file sizes, then load faster and that is so important for mobile users. Your website page should not have massive linked images on it that take forever to load, and uses too much of your viewers online data too.
• Text on the page should change and scale for mobile users. It should never break over the side of the screen and need scrolling width ways on your website. On mobile view the text shouldn’t be too small or too large to read normally by the viewer.
• All the sections of the website should load on mobile in the correct order. You need to give your viewers the information they want and need first before showing them other parts of your site. For example, you shouldn’t need to scroll pass a contact form to get to the page content to read about what you clicked to read. This could lose you customers as they maybe confused by using your website on mobile device. Everything should be stacked under each other so the user can easily scroll down their phone and see all the important page content.
• Your website menus should be out of sight on mobile use with a button for them to pop up and show, that is easy for the user to navigate around your site.
• Lastly, your contact details should be on show to allow the customer easy access to click and call you from their mobile device.
Your website is out of touch with the business
All fresh, modern and successful businesses adapt over time. You only need to look around the world at global brands who adjust their branding over the years and keep evolving. It is important for your own business to ensure the current branding still works for your target market, and you should know the right time when changes need to happen.
Your company might have gone through a logo or branding change, but the website hasn’t been fully updated to this change. If your website is going in the wrong direction and is not in line with the business, then it is time for a new website. It can confuse customers if some of your old branding is in one place and it is different to what you have elsewhere. You need to ensure everything is updated and matches to keep that one clear message to your customers about the type of business you are.
Are you happy with the traffic you get from Google?
Is your existing website not performing well for you in Google searches? Maybe your competition is appearing above you in higher positions and your old website just isn’t capably of completing online anymore. SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is how a website scores in Google’s ranking algorithm. There is many aspects to your rankings but the better you do things then the higher up Google you will be found for your keywords that are relevant to your business.
There are two types of SEO, on-page and off-page. On-page is your website and its content. It looks at your build to ensure the site has had the right work done on it to ensure it get’s listed in Google. With off-page boosts then this involves various link building activities and social media to ensure it helps give your website a better score for your main keywords.
Is your site ranked highly at the moment in search engines? Even if you have good results in your search rankings if your website still needs a re-design don’t worry about losing your rankings as when done with the correct practices having a new website created will keep your previous Google goodness.
If your website isn’t sitting so well in the rankings at present, then it is time for you to consider looking into a good SEO service that will help you plan out your SEO strategy. Taken SEO into account is key to your online success fo any website and is something you should always budget for when looking to do a new website.
If you run Google Ads (PPC) and are not getting the leads from this you want, then again, it might be down to either the set-up of the campaigns or your website. When using PPC you should always have unique landing pages that are created around the purpose of the Google Ad PPC so it scores better and gets you better results. Does your current website allow you to create great content driven landing pages to promote your services and products from?
Can you update your website whenever you want?
All modern websites should come with a content management system (CMS) that allows you, if you want to login into the admin area and update and change the content you want to on your website. If you don’t have this ability on your website, then you should look to update it to one that offers you this. You should be able to add text, images and posts, etc. all without the need of a web developer to make the changes for you.
If your website is built on an outdated platform that doesn’t allow you to update the website any time you want, then this could cost you more money each time you need a change done by the web developer rather than just doing it yourself. It is good to know you can do this on your website if you want to, as a lot of our clients still just due to their own time restraints get us to update their site for them, as they are too busy doing other things in their business. But, as Google rewards sites that have updates and content changes often as part of its search algorithm, it is good to have your own website CMS there if do want to use it.
So if your existing website has an old, bad to use CMS system or none at all then get the time is now to consider a redesign of your website.
Google Web Analytics
Does your website give you key insights into your website performance and users? Every site should include Google Analytics on it to record this important data and give you information on your website. If your website doesn’t have Google Analytics on it you really need to ask your web developer WHY NOT? As all sites should have this automatically activated on them when build. There are lots of stats available to you to review how your site is going if your website has this as part of it.
So, are you needing a New Website Redesign?
If after reading this you think your website is in need of an overhaul, and fresh redesign then Web Designers Glasgow is here to help you, and ensure your new website is everything your business needs. Let’s have a chat now on 0141 432 5001 or use our contact form to drop us a message and get started on the road to getting your a better website than performing!