In today’s fast-paced digital world, it’s important to keep your website fresh and up-to-date. Your website is not just a collection of words and images — it’s a reflection of your business. It’s the digital equivalent of your storefront or office, the place where potential customers can come to get an idea of what you’re all about and whether you’re the kind of place they want to do business with.
Depending on your industry, you may need to do a complete website redesign every 3-5 years.
Keeping your website fresh and converting visitors into customers may seem like a lot of work, but it’s essential to stay ahead of your competitors. So if it’s been a while since you’ve given your website a makeover, it’s time to get to work! Your next website redesign can be a huge success and less stressful if you plan ahead and do a little research.
Here are the 8 red flags that signal it’s time for a website redesign:
🚩 1. Security Vulnerabilities
As Google and other search engines are constantly updating their algorithms, so are hackers. The majority of cyber-attacks happen because of vulnerabilities in software that were created years ago. If you haven’t updated your site in a while, you could be leaving yourself vulnerable to attack. If your site is using old technology or has outdated code, it may be vulnerable to attack by hackers. To make sure this doesn’t happen, consider a website redesign.
🚩 2. Your Competitors Have Recently Done a Website Redesign
If your competitors have recently redesigned their websites, it will be harder for you to stand out from the crowd if yours hasn’t been touched in a while. New design trends change so often that if you don’t update your website regularly, it can start to look dated compared to competitors who have recently updated their sites. If you’ve been using the same design for years and want an edge over your competition, it’s time for a website redesign.
🚩 3. Outdated Content and Plugins
The content on your website may have been relevant when it was first published, but that doesn’t mean it still is today. It is important to update the content, and your plugins on your website as your business grows and changes. If you’re using outdated content and plugins, visitors will think your business is outdated. Content is one of the most important aspects of any website. It’s what draws people in, keeps them engaged, and what gets them to make purchases. If your content is outdated or out of date, people aren’t going to take you seriously. This can be particularly true if you’re selling products or services that require a certain level of expertise.
Plugins are also crucial for websites because they can provide additional functionality for visitors and help improve user experience. For example, suppose you have a blog, contact forms, or other basic plugins on your WordPress website that have been active for more than two years. In that case, there are high chances that it has outdated plugins installed on it, which may cause security issues or create problems while updating the core WordPress files. It is highly recommended that you update all the plugins at least once every two years to make sure they are not causing any issues with your website performance or security.
🚩4. Your Website Is Difficult To Navigate
For users to find what they need on your site quickly and easily, it needs great navigation that makes sense for them and search engines. It also needs to be consistent across all pages so that visitors can easily navigate from one page of the site to another without having to hunt around for it or get lost along the way!
🚩 5. Low Search Engine Rankings
If your website has not been updated in a few years, its search engine rankings may be suffering. This is because search engines use algorithms to determine how relevant a site is when someone searches for information related to your business. The longer a page has been around without any changes or updates, the less likely it is that Google will rank it highly in search results.
However, if you redesign your site every few years, you’ll give Google new content to index and rank accordingly — and the higher up your site appears in search engine results pages (SERPs), the more likely people are going to click on it. While it’s true that other factors influence SEO performance besides just content quality (such as backlinks), having new content on your site will go a long way toward keeping your ranking high over time.
🚩 6. Slow Load Time
If you’ve been using the same website for a long time, you might have noticed that it takes longer than usual to load on mobile devices. This is one of the most common reasons people will leave your site without purchasing anything, reading any content, or contacting you for your services. A slow loading site will also impact SEO since Google penalizes sites with slow loading times by lowering their rankings on the search engine results page.
🚩 7. Your Companies Vision, Goals, and Branding Have Changed
Your company has probably changed dramatically since you first launched your website — whether through expansion, restructuring, or simply shifting focus in response to changing market conditions. You may have started out with one idea of what your company was going to do, but now it has changed. This is common as companies grow and evolve over time. If your vision has changed drastically, your website needs to reflect these changes. It’s important that potential customers can see who you are today and where you want to go tomorrow.
🚩 8. Not Optimized For Mobile Devices
If your website is not optimized for mobile devices, you could be missing out on valuable traffic. With more than half of all internet traffic coming from smartphones and tablets, your site must be optimized for smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices. Mobile optimization will help you reach a wider audience, improve your search engine ranking, and allow for a better user experience.
What Steps Do You Need to Take To Get Your Website Redesigned?
If it’s been a few years since you’ve done anything to your website, it’s likely that it needs a redesign. Lucky for you, the process is relatively simple – as long as you know what steps to take. The first step is to do your research and evaluate your goals. What are you hoping to achieve with your redesign? A fresh look? More leads? A better user experience?
Once you know what you want, it’s time to reach out to Eviva Media for a free website audit. We’ll take a look at your current site and make tailored recommendations for how it can be improved.
From there, we’ll work with you to bring your vision to life and create a website that’s sure to impress.
