5 Signs it's Time to Refresh your Site
Maintaining your website is similar to looking after your home. It requires time and money to make it stand out, feel unique, and showcase your individual style; all this while still being able to run efficiently. While a home can reflect your style and status, it’s also important that it feels comfortable and safe for all who live in or visit it.
Unfortunately, upkeep isn’t a once-off responsibility. Sure, you can buy new furniture, update your décor, or rearrange the living room. But a house needs more; you might need to fix a leaky roof or replace a plug point. You might even have to spread out or extend as your family grows, even renovating the entire house if necessary.
The same goes for your website. Without regular redesign, upkeep, and reorganisation, your visitors and customers might start to respond negatively and the brand behind the website will begin to suffer.
In this post, we have outlined 5 compelling reasons why you should consider redesigning your website. We have also provided guidance on how to identify these reasons and approach the redesign process.
1. Your website looks outdated.
Design trends change. What might be considered popular in design, changes over time. A website that was designed using the latest trends a few years ago may now look dated. Unfortunately, the issue becomes more apparent when there’s no one to monitor the website properly.
Keep an eye out for the signs. If the bounce rate on your homepage is over 95%, something is wrong. Maybe your website was designed without being updated more than two years ago; or your site simply feels outdated, especially alongside your competitors.
2. Users are struggling to use your website.
A variety of problems can arise when a website appears outdated and neglected. At the same time having a beautiful website that’s difficult to use is also a problem.
There are several reasons why users may find it difficult to navigate a website:
- it's cluttered and difficult to use
- the user journey is unclear or broken
- there are too many conversion points
- the copy isn't designed for quick reading, etc.
3. You’re Not Seeing Any Meaningful Traffic, Leads, or Sales
While the issue at hand might not necessarily be the lack of website traffic or engagement, it could in fact pertain to users discovering the website but ultimately failing to convert once they arrive.
It’s also important to keep in mind that if the problem does not stem from the website's design or usability, it is possible that it is an SEO issue.
There are a few factors that could influence meaningful traffic to your site, these include:
- Outdated content marketing such as blog articles
- Poor keyword usage within the website pages
- Poor accessibility features
While the website is attracting the right amount of traffic, these issues could be preventing these visitors from converting into any real leads or sales.
Users are suddenly only using forms or live chats, but only to report issues on the website.
4. The Design Isn’t Mobile-First
For years, we’ve been hearing about the importance of mobile-first design. Additionally, Google makes sure to give websites that prioritise mobile users higher rankings than ones that don't.
Mobile first, as the name suggests, means starting the product design from the mobile end which has more restrictions, then expanding its features to create a tablet or desktop version.
Designing mobile first allows a designer to create a simpler and more efficient experience for each visitor. Additionally, it stops you from removing sections of the website for some visitors while leaving them in for others, for example, a section that won’t fit on mobile. A mobile-first design ensures that the experience is identical across all devices.
5. Your website’s Software Needs to be updated
It might not always be necessary to change the look of the website or even any element in the frontend. Sometimes, it’s important to check the software or tools responsible for how the website works. These tools could include your hosting, the website CMS, themes or plugins, the website builder or even third-party integration.
It’s essential to assess whether all these tools are truly providing the website and its users with the greatest possible service.
Additionally, to improve the website’s productivity for the company and how visitors respond to it, it’s a good idea to look at new tools your website might need and how these are evolving.
Sometimes small changes can go a long way in improving the user experience on your site. At Amazee Labs, we constantly update our designs to ensure that they are both beautiful and functional. If you have any questions or would like to chat with us about a refresh, get in touch, we’d love to hear from you.