Five signs your website needs a redesign
It can be really difficult when making a decision about the right time to give your website a new design. How to go about the redesign of the site also poses its own challenges as well. In redesigning your website, your total commitment is needed and also a great deal of trust in those handling your website redesign. The effect of an unfriendly website to your site visitors can cost your business a lot, hence, the need for you to pay a lot of attention to it.
In designing any website, there are a lot of principles that you need to follow which include setting an easy to follow navigation, a great aesthetics value, and an easy to use layout as well as a great content management. There are several different purposes of websites which ranges from an eCommerce to the ones that simply give your business an online presence. Whatever the reason for the existence of your website, making it as user friendly and interactive as possible is very important to your brand and business in this age.
If you are in doubt whether it is time for you to switch to a new design or continue with the old design on your website, then this article is just right for you. Check out some of the signs listed below to know if you need to redesign your website.
1. Your website is outdated or not appealing to you
There is this popular saying that you only get one chance to leave a first impression, and the first impression in this age is actually your website. No one will like to waste any more second on a website that looks awful. Once they have this bad impression about your website, they tend to stick to it and they know not to ever visit it again.
In addition, leaving your website outdated by sticking to one old technology will be a bad idea. For instance, flash is getting dropped for the new HTML5 which is taking its place. If your website still relies heavily on flash, then this might be a good time to initiate a website redesign before it starts to take effect in your search engine optimization.
Furthermore, another mistake that most designers make is to dish out all their information to the visitors at once on the home page. Although this might seem informational, but the visitor didn’t visit your website to read your content, but rather to gather more information about you. What your site visitor is interested in is “Who you are” and “why you are the right choice for him/her”. It might just be great for you to understand what your visitors want and integrate this in the home page without giving out too much information at once.
2. Your website is not responsive on mobile
With the increasing number of internet users making use of their phones, gone are the days when you need to get a computer before accessing the web. According to statistics, there are more people accessing the web with their Smartphone compared to those that do so with the use of a computer. Getting your website to be responsive implies that all its contents and images adapt to any device and show the same thing. You will lose a lot of visitors if your website does not look good on the mobile.
In addition to this, there will also be a reduction in your ranking on the search engine. You can easily know if your website is mobile friendly by entering the URL of your website on Google’s mobile friendly test site.
3. When your search engine rank reduces
The probability of your website being reached through search engine is almost zero if your website does not make it to the front page of the search engine. According to studies, it is discovered that only about 6% of searches make it past the front page of the search result. In fact, most users opt for either the first or second result on the search page. This shows you the importance of getting your search engine rank up.
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It is recommended that you work on your URLs so that they give more information that will help the search engine to process your page. Working on SEO of your website is very delicate and you need to be careful of some mistakes that are common in it.
4. When your website is difficult to navigate
When a new visitor gets to a website, the first thing that comes to their mind is how they will get the necessary information that they need and leave your website. They do not want to start playing around your website to get the details that they need. Once they find it difficult to navigate your website, the get frustrated and look for other alternatives for a solution to their problem. Neatly arrange your contents and remove any poor content that are not useful to your users. Also, you should try to work on the speed of your website as a slow transition will quickly annoy your visitors and you should always try to avoid that.
The navigation of your website also has the roles which they play in the SEO of your site. The easier it is for the web crawler to scan through your website, the better it is for your ranking. Your main aim is to generate a simple and easy to use navigation.
5. When you have outgrown or changed your brand
Once you undergo an identity update or you make some changes to the direction of your brand, then there is need for you to make some adjustments to your website. A brand is more than a logo or just a tagline. It is your general identity and this is what your website should portray online. Growing organizations sometimes outgrow their initial plan and need to add some additional information to their website. Your website should not remain the same way while you have gone into other things.
Conclusion
Making changes to your website is a major task that should be taken as a serious task. You need to know exactly when to make the changes, and spend your resources on making the necessary changes.
Thirumalesh Prasad C G (Thiru) is an entrepreneur, Founder, and CEO of Inboundsys. He has over 22 years of experience working for various multinational IT products and services companies in India and abroad. He was a significant member and worked as a user interface architect, designing the user interface for many web applications and products. In addition to running Inboundsys, he is an advisory board member in various other design studios and digital marketing agencies. He is a passionate blogger who loves writing on digital marketing, inbound marketing, lifestyle, philosophy, positive thinking, and motivation.