We all give our motor vehicles an annual service and MOT to keep them performing legally and at their best. But when it comes to your company website do you look after it in the same way?
It’s not enough to just have a website these days! It needs to look good and be able to effectively demonstrate your brand’s personality. It needs to present information in a clear, precise, and accessible way. A website needs to give prospective customers a strong first impression. Otherwise, you’re competing for their attention alongside many more businesses with more favourable websites.
Are you unsure whether your existing website is up to the task? Here are 7 reasons why you need a new website.
1) The Visual appeal & UX
People who visit your website see it as a reflection of your business. Without an appealing website, customers are not going to return. But if it looks professional and supplies people with valuable information, tips, and guidance, they will. They will see you as an expert or someone with authority. On the flip side, if the website is badly designed, out of date, or poorly structured then the opposite assumptions will be made.
It’s not only about the looks though! With user experience (UX) we also need to consider how easy your site is to use. How fast it is, and how easy it is to find information. Not only that, how difficult it is to complete the desired action. Older websites tend to struggle here. More on building a UX strategy in our customer experience strategy blog here.
2) Mobile Friendliness
Another factor to consider is the mobile-friendliness of your website. Why? In the UK we are now spending more time on smartphones than we are on laptops and PCs every day. As well as this Google is now using mobile-first indexing meaning it will rank mobile-friendly websites before non-mobile-friendly sites. Therefore, you will be penalised for not having a mobile-friendly website, which could be detrimental to your business. So, by using Responsive Web Design, which allows websites to adapt to the size of the screen that it’s being viewed on, it allows someone who is on a laptop to be shown the same website as someone on a mobile device.
3) Website Speed
A major problem is website speed. People are not willing to hang around these days and wait for a website to load. They will just leave and probably never return. There are several tools you can use to check the speed of your website including Google Page Speed Insights, which will show you how long your site takes to load. If your speed is bad, you should consider changing the elements that are slowing you down. For example, the sizes of uploaded images on your site could be a big factor in site speed. Alternatively, a new website could also help.
4) Content Management & SEO
Users are visiting your website to look for useful information on your products/services. Therefore, your ability to be able to modify existing content, upload new content and remove any outdated content on your website is very important. A simple site redesign can allow you to target your website copy more effectively and engage your site visitors faster. Not only that, but by uploading fresh and unique content regularly you will encourage people to revisit your site more frequently.
Another factor with content management is SEO. If you don’t update your website regularly with new content, then it will fall in search engine rankings. This is because search engines such as Google, regard websites with recent content as the most relevant to web users. A website redesign will also allow you to rethink your keyword targeting. People are likely to search differently than they did a few years ago, and this is even more true with the increased use of smartphones.
A way of dealing with content management issues is to have an up-to-date website on a content management system such as WordPress. This allows you to be able to update your website yourself. You can simply write in what you want, so you can personally add to or switch your content based on your business goals, as well as optimising your website for SEO.
5) Call to Actions
Does your website have effective calls to action to convert website visitors to customers? What is a call to action (CTA)? A call-to-action is a button or link that you place on your website to drive prospects to become leads by completing an action on your landing page. Without having your call to action clearly highlighted on every landing page it is unlikely to be enough to persuade your visitors to complete the action. By modifying existing web pages, or creating a new website, this can be rectified.
6) Measuring Website Effectiveness/Analytics
Are you, or can you currently track key website performance metrics such as overall traffic, organic traffic, bounce rate, average time on site, average page views per visit, conversions, etc.? By tracking monthly, it will allow you to see improvements and alert you to any anomalies.
Old websites are not equipped with tools to measure how effective your online presence is. There are many tools you can use to measure your website success, but they all tend to need a modern website.
7) Website Security
Websites and social media feeds are getting hacked more and more frequently. Security issues can appear on any website, whether it is 10 years old or brand new. But in terms of probability, it is much more likely that there will be security flaws in an older website as they tend to be built and rely on older less secure technology and coding.
In Summary
The above 7 points demonstrate the several important things to keep an eye on when looking at and reviewing your website’s capabilities. Each is an important aspect, so by reviewing your website performance and determining what your prospects want, and what your competitors are doing, you should be able to come to the correct decision on whether you need to upgrade elements of your existing website or go all out with a brand spanking new one.
Like your motor vehicle, without maintaining your website to keep it performing at its best, you’ll eventually be left stranded out in the cold.