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Six reasons it may be time to redesign your website

An outdated website is one of the easiest ways for any company to derail its marketing efforts. If your site is out of step with your business goals or is difficult to navigate, it reflects poorly on your company and its ability to serve your customers.

So how do you know when a makeover is due? If your site falls under any of these six categories, it’s probably time for a redesign:

  1. Your site’s content is as ancient as the Dead Sea Scrolls. Fresh, relevant content is king. Even without obvious dates in your content, visitors will know if you’re not updating the site and will eventually stop coming. Just updating the “News” page isn’t enough; you need to give them more reasons to return. Blogs, surveys, real-time message boards, streaming video and other features that change regularly can dramatically boost traffic.
  2. Your site looks like it was designed in 1995. Amateurish, slow-loading graphics, old-school frames, clip art and blinking text make you look like you don’t care about your business or your customers and prospects. Ideally, the site should complement your marketing collateral, which you also should be keeping up to date, and showcase your company as an industry leader.
  3. Your site is difficult to navigate. Navigation is one of the most critical elements of a site’s usability. If visitors are using your site’s search feature rather than moving through the site on their own, you need to rethink the architecture. Companies sometimes add pages to their sites rather than redesigning the pages, and the navigation can become unwieldy and confusing as a result. Make it easy on visitors or they will find another site that is intuitive.
  4. Your site does not reflect changes in your business. Has your company been acquired or acquired another firm? Has it changed business lines or grown substantially? Has it added new products or services? Your business may no longer be the same as it was when you launched your website. You need to share these changes with customers and prospects.
  5. Your site is not on par with those of your competitors. Have you looked at your competitors’ sites recently? Many companies have revamped their sites in recent years. If your site is not at least as good as, and preferably better than, the competition’s, you’re probably losing business to them.
  6. You’re not showing up high in the search engines. Optimizing your site so search engines can better find and list you drives more visitors to your site. Poor rankings in search engines can be the result of bad design choices or coding as well as not using keywords throughout the site.

Redesigning a website is a major project that is best left to the professionals. An experienced consultant will evaluate your site and help you understand what is possible with a redesign and how to move forward.

For information on how The Simons Group can help your company with a website redesign, contact Lee Zoldan at lzoldan@thesimonsgroup.com.