In this digital and hyper-connected age, your website can also serve as the face and store of your business. In fact, how your website looks is enough for a prospect to decide whether they would want to transact with you.
This is where excellent web design comes in.
However, it is more than just ensuring that your site looks visually appealing. It is also about making people perceive that you are a legit and trustworthy brand.
That said, how would you know if it is time to spruce up your website? Well, you should check whether you see these seven warning signs:
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1. Your website is not mobile-friendly
Optimizing your website for mobile is essential. People these days use mobile as one of their primary research tools, and people will more likely purchase from a mobile-friendly site.
In fact, according to a Google report, 50% of smartphone users visit a local store within 24 hours of finding it online. 18% of those local searches will also result in sales.
So, if you aren’t optimized for mobile yet, you’re missing out on prospective customers in the long run.
2. Your web content cluttered
Although there’s no expiration date for a website, how often do you need a site redesign?
An excellent rule of thumb would be every three to five years. Because technology regularly changes, along with best practices and SEO strategies, you need to stay on top of these changes.
At Sytian Website Design Philippines, we often consider whether it is time to tweak a website’s look every five years. The value of redesign is easy to see, and its impact on your business will be extensive.
Also, if too many design elements look cluttered, you’re likely to lose visitors quickly.
3. Your content updates are complicated
Making changes to your content, publishing a new blog post, or updating small elements in your site shouldn’t need a minor miracle.
If your site platform makes it hard to achieve these minor changes, you might want to move to a new content management system. That way, updating and presenting your content can be as easy as a breeze.
There are plenty of options for open-source CMS that you can pick from to make adding, creating, and updating simple. Examples of these are WordPress, Drupal, and Magento. You can compare and contrast each one.
4. Your website has a high bounce rate
If you see that your website has high bounce rates, then it probably needs updating. In a nutshell, a bounce rate is the percent of visitors that visit a single page on your site during a session.
Bounce rates do vary, with an average of about 40 to 55 percent. It means that about 40 to 55 out of 100 web visitors are visiting a single page throughout their session. You can check for your site’s bounce rate on Google Analytics.
High bounce rates also mean a poor user experience.
If visitors do not have a positive user experience on your website, they will leave immediately and visit another website. This is as good as giving your prospects away to your competitors. Plus, it can make your bounce rate skyrocket, which can hurt your search engine rankings.
As such, it is always best to consider how you can help a client finish their task when website designing.
5. Your website takes forever to load
There is something wrong with a website that takes ages to load. Plus, customers these days have low attention spans. So, they won’t be pleased if you force them to sit around and wait for your page to load.
So, make sure that your site can fully load all photos, texts, videos, and other content quickly. Having a slow-loading site will make you lose your customers in the long run and is a surefire sign that you need to have a site redesign.
Google doesn’t like slow-loading pages. So much so that it can hurt your SEO efforts.
6. Your competitors are redesigning theirs
Sure, it is good to stick to what you know is right. But if you see your competitors are sprucing up their website, there might be something going on.
It could mean that their old web design no longer serves its purpose. Another reason could be that they want their website to be accessible for humans and search engine bots. As such, it can help if you follow suit.
If your site is lagging behind your competitors, you should consider making a site redesign to make you stand out from the rest of the pack.
Check Out this Website Design ideas that are harming the performance of your website
7. You are not converting any visitors
These days, site visitors are deemed as vanity metrics. What you should keep an eye on would be your conversions.
But if you are driving thousands of web traffic with zero conversions, something might be seriously wrong with your website. You need to make sure that it’s simple to get from point A to B, and then it follows through a logical path to a purchasing decision.
Let’s say, can people click on the phone number you’ve placed on your site from their phone and call you? Can they learn more by filling in a contact form and then schedule an appointment?
While these things might be simple additions, they can make a huge difference in people who want to use your products and services. If they can’t do these things, they’re more likely to move on to a competitor.
8. Your customers aren’t happy
Finally, you can have an aesthetically pleasing site with an impressive design and regularly get a steady stream of visitors. But if visitors aren’t engaged enough with what they see, they can go elsewhere after shortly visiting your site.
Having high bounce rates is apparent if you check your web analytics regularly. And the most common reason is that your customers aren’t engaged enough with the design and content of your site. Speed and mobile-friendliness play a role as well.
Over to You
If your website has been up and running for more than a year and it is yet to bring results, you should check what could be the issue. Sure, it can be that your marketing efforts are lacking. But it can also have something to do with how your website looks. If you see the warning signs listed above, it is high time that you redesign your website.
