5 Reasons you should invest in a NEW website
There are various reasons to invest in a new website such as attracting new leads, cleaning up any issues with code and updating the overall design however I have detailed below a few things you might need to take a more in depth look at that you may not have considered.
You should really look to invest in your business website if your current site:
Has a poor user experience
Isn’t mobile friendly
Has irrelevant messaging
Has an outdated design
Has a low conversion and/or engagement rate
YOUR WEBSITE OFFERS A POOR USER EXPERIENCE
Many factors can contribute to a poor user experience on your website from slow load speeds and spammy adverts to inconsistent tone of voice and confusing calls to action.
If your website is getting views but isn’t converting or has a high bounce rate (percentage of users who leave your website immediately after entering) it may be time to consider a website redesign. A thorough audit of your website can help to understand where you’re falling short and give the designer an insight into the flaws which need ironing out within the redesign process.
Think about when you enter a supermarket. You know roughly where to find milk, bread and frozen foods. You also have an understanding of whereabouts that checkouts might be and customer service. If you imagine for a moment that you walked into a strange supermarket and everything was in a place it wouldn’t normally be, such as milk next to the pet food and gardening tools in the frozen section chances are you’d not be able to find what you were looking for and get bored and leave rather than spending hours walking round every aisle to find everything on your shopping list.
To sum up, there’s almost an expectation that when you enter a website the logo is in the header with the navigation, if you’re on a website that lists lots of products there’s either dropdown menus or a search functionality so that you can easily find what you’re looking for.
Keep it simple and don’t overload your user with information.
YOUR WEBSITE ISN’T MOBILE FRIENDLY
Most people these days will view a website on their phone rather than their desktop. If your website isn’t responsive users may need to pinch and zoom into your website to view your content which results in a very poor user experience with customers becoming frustrated and exiting your site before making a conversion.
A lot of designers will now design your website for mobile first as opposed to designing for desktop first and then scaling down and removing information. Designing for mobile first ensures that all of your essential information is displayed well from the offset and adding extra designed elements to the desktop version should you choose to add these.
YOUR WEBSITE’S MESSAGING IS NO LONGER RELEVANT
Have a read through your website. Does the messaging still apply to your current service offerings or the products you sell? There’s a chance that if you haven’t updated this information in the last year that you need to at a bare minimum update this content.
We are constantly evolving as people, business owners and brands so keeping your site up to date with relevant content is essential to your business growth.
Also make sure that your messaging is clear and concise.
YOUR WEBSITE DESIGN IS OUTDATED
There are many aspects of a well-designed website that aren’t just for design’s sake with on trend colours and branded elements.
Looking deeper into HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) there’s a powerful link between visual design and user behaviour and satisfaction which aren’t limited to the initial visual appeal of a website. It’s important to bear in mind when designing your website several components including, attractiveness, efficiency and trust and so on.
I’ve broken these few down to give you a better insight.
Attractiveness
Pretty much speaks for itself. If you’ve got drop shadows and a busy layout chances are your website design needs a refresh. As I have stated previously it’s not all about design for design’s sake however if you have an old or unappealing layout you’re likely to have users heading straight for the close tab function.
Simple modern layouts are far more trendy these days. Don’t overload your customers with text and huge images, animations, sliding logos and videos. If you do choose to include these on your website make sure you optimise for web and choose a less overwhelming layout.
Efficiency
Slow load speeds are a sure fire way to drive away customers and conversions. Loading speeds can be a result of many different factors such as large image files, outdated Flash content, an excessive amount of ads and so on. It’s probably worth having a website audit prior to redesigning your website to ensure these issues aren’t carried across to your new website.
If you need help with a website audit just give me a shout!
Trust
If you’re anything like me, chances are you have entered a website, seen what looks like a spammy site covered in jumping ads and no reassuringly familiar layout leading you to wonder whether you really should enter your bank details for that sale item you fancied.
Users want to feel safe when they are inputting sensitive information on your website so it’s important to include trust factors such as secure payment gateways for ecommerce websites with the reassuring logos for VISA, Mastercard and PayPal etc in your website footer.
Other things to consider are the consistency of your website layout and content and usability.
YOUR WEBSITE DOESN’T ENCOURAGE CONVERSIONS OR ENGAGEMENT
This could be due to various issues with your website but one thing you should consider is adding clear calls to action. Sometimes buttons don’t have enough contrast between the background and other elements on the page to be able to stand out and encourage engagement and therefore conversions.
All of the above points I’ve discussed are potential reasons your website isn't converting so the best thing you can do at this point is to have a web designer complete an audit of your current site to see what the issues could be and find ways to combat these.
If you’re interested in a website audit or rebuilding your website
