In today’s day and age, technology and the marketing that depends on it is constantly changing and evolving. If your website doesn’t keep up with the latest trends and technologies, you’ll notice a drop in conversions after a while.
Your website should be your most powerful marketing tool when that’s no longer the case, it means that it’s time for an upgrade. This can be a hard decision for some companies, mostly because they don’t know the tell-tale signs that a website revamp is needed.
So, how do you know if your website needs a revamp?
- One of the first signs can be something called Brand Disconnect. What does this mean? – you might ask
As a company grows and evolves, its mission and audience change with some of their products and services. Brand Disconnect occurs when the website no longer offers users the same look and feel as they navigate throughout the different sections of a website and other platforms that are associated with it, such as social media pages.
- A more extreme case is when you are embarrassed to give out the URL – years have passed since you’ve last updated the website, and now it looks very outdated. The design of the website matters a lot! While it’s important for your website to run seamlessly, it also needs to look fresh and modern, not like it’s stuck in the early digital era.
There is no expiration date on a website, but you might bump into clients asking how often do you update your website. It is recommended to update the website every 3 to 5 years. You might be asking why? – it’s because 3-5 years is a lot when we talk about advances in technology! As designs evolve, old designs tend to look cluttered and become less pleasing when we talk about aesthetics.
- Your website is difficult to navigate
Your website’s navigation is a critical element – it must show the visitors where they have been and where to go. Having a disconnect along the user’s journey can lead to confusion and frustration, eventually leading to the user abandoning the website. This leads to a decrease in sales and returning visitors, along with frustrated users and high bounce rates – which result in a decrease in SEO ranking.
- It takes ages to load
The loading speed of your website is one of the most important factors when talk about conversions. Studies have shown that website visitors are more likely to click away from a website that takes too much time to load. If you own an outdated website, it might not load nearly as quickly as newer websites. And the negative impacts don’t stop here – it can seriously affect how your website ranks in searches. It is good practice to test your website loading times annually. To test your website’s speed, we recommend using Google’s Pagespeed Insights and Pingdom’s Speed Test Tool.
- Your website is not mobile-friendly or responsive
2015 was the year when mobile search queries overtook desktop queries – a couple of years have passed since then, but mobile searches still make up for more than 70% of total search volume worldwide. Mobile searches are so important that Google is now basing its rankings on the mobile version of your website rather than the desktop. If your website is not responsive, it will suffer penalties when it comes to ranking in searches. If you don’t know if your website is mobile responsive, you can use this mobile-friendly testing tool.
- Low conversion rates
Being found on Google and having potential customers interact with your website is great, but those visitors are not always converting. Websites that have a hard time generating leads and conversions are generally missing some crucial page elements which would lead to conversions. These elements can be calls to action, social proof or simply content that speaks to your target audience.
- Bad SEO
When your website is not ranking properly on search engines like Google or Bing, you know there’s a problem. This can come from a lack of optimization, a lack of good and relevant content or it can come from technical issues, such as slow load time, caching issues, etc.
We here at JusttempalteIt have been in the website design business for over a decade. We’ve helped doomed websites regain their former glory and gave dying businesses a second chance.
If you would be interested in a website revamp, please contact us or you can call us on 0 121 285 1050