Updating your organization’s website is important for a number of reasons. So when do you need a website redesigned? A new website design project can help with your marketing strategy to increase traffic to your website, drive sales leads, or improve donations and revenue. Some of the early warning signs of an ineffective website may include a difficult administrative experience, where the last substantial update was a few years ago or the look and style feels outdated compared to your competitors. If this is the case, then it may be time for your website to be redesigned.
Many organization websites also lack the functionality, navigation, performance, and conversion focus needed to compete in a diverse online marketplace. While the thought of a redesign may seem like a daunting process, we have a few signs it might be time to start planning your next design project.
1. Downward Trends in Analytic Data
One of the first places to look at when evaluating the effectiveness of your website are the trends your staff is noticing. A loss in site traffic month-to-month is not the only area you want to evaluate. The other major areas that determine how engaging your website is for a user are bounce rate as well as time spent on the site. A website bounce rate shows whether or not your visitors are further exploring your web pages. If a high percentage of your visitors are leaving after a short period of time or after coming to one page of the site, it may be due to your site structure or content organization.
2. Decrease in Sales Revenue
Many businesses don’t realize how much the design of their website impacts their business sales. Your website should provide a clear explanation of products and services, while being easy to navigate. If your website lacks the visual appeal needed to generate interest among your online audience, you may be missing out on revenue opportunities. Over 94% of first impressions generated by an online audience are design related. So even if your business has a superior product or service, your website must effectively communicate your value if you want to remain competitive in an online space.
3. Not a Reflection of Business Branding
When your visitors come to your website, you want to think about how they might describe your brand. Website design plays a large role in how your brand image is perceived, and an outdated or poorly organized website may deter visitors from engaging with you online. If you have updated any aspects of your brand, such as logos, colors, or marketing material, your website also needs to be cohesive with this new image.
4. No Increase in Sales Leads
To stay ahead of the competition, your website must incorporate some strategic elements to help you increase the amount of traffic directed to the website and time spent engaging with it. This is where consideration of UX design can be helpful. UX design (user experience design) takes into consideration how content, imagery, and navigation should be presented to an audience to encourage them to further explore a website. UX design also incorporates onsite CTA (call to action) elements, which can help in increasing onsite conversions. A higher click through rate will help your business generate sales leads and revenue.
5. Poor Security and Performance
While security and performance may be viewed as low priority for website updates, it can have a major impact on your website visitors and traffic rankings. A website that takes longer than 3 seconds to load or does not have proper security measures put in place (such as updating to HTTPS) is often abandoned by visitors. Google will also decrease search rankings for a website that has poor performance or does not have the proper security measures in place.
6. Design is Not Responsive
Responsive design is another equally important update to security and performance in terms of visitor traffic and its effect on search rankings. Over 60% of all internet access now comes from a mobile device, yet 91% of small businesses do not have a website that is responsive on these smaller devices. A visitor that comes to a website that does not register properly on these smaller devices will often leave for a competitor’s site that provides a better user experience.
7. Difficult to Navigate
Website navigation is an area that often can be attributed to a high bounce rate on a website if it is not properly optimized for a new visitors experience. Visitors want to be able to access information quickly, and navigational bounces are often attributed to frustration experienced when trying to find a website content. A good navigation menu is composed of easy to understand topics (such as an about section, news, contact us, events, careers, etc.) with related drop downs below it.
8. Doesn’t Incorporate Onsite SEO
To improve traffic rankings, your website must incorporate on-page elements related to industry keywords that your visitors are searching for. A website design that incorporates onsite SEO is more likely to have a higher percentage of site traffic and new business leads. Your website content can be better understood by the search engines by developing a site map or incorporating meta description tags for each page. Incorporating keyword tags throughout your website content will also be helpful if your business is looking to improve their search engine rankings.
9. Content is Not Engaging
How your business’s website presents content is a critical aspect to engaging new visitors, as well as building reliability and trust in your brand. Once you establish trust through the resources you provide, there is a higher chance your visitors will want to purchase products or services from you. If your website content is not fresh or relevant, you may want to consider incorporating some new content areas into an updated website design. For example, a blog or news area can be a great resource for new visitors to find industry related information.
Your business’s website should be a reflection of your current branding and values if you want to engage and attract the right audience to your website. If you are finding that your site lacks engaging content, is not responsive, is difficult to navigate, or is noticing a downward trend in visitation and online engagement, it may be time to consider a website redesign.
Alliance Interactive is a digital, web design, web development, and website maintenance agency for nonprofits, associations, b2b organizations, and more. Give us a call today at 888-222-9056 or contact us here.