5 Signs It’s a Good Time to Redesign Your Website

Your website is the digital face of your organization, so making sure it’s top of the line is vital to staying in the good graces of your consumers. Just like a night out with your friends, chances are you wouldn’t step out of the house half-dressed, so why publish a site that’s half finished or outdated? To help you find out if the time is right for a digital revamp of your page, here’s the five biggest signs it’s a good time for a website redesign.

Incorporating an Unresponsive Design

It’s a mobile world, so if you’re still only catering to desktop shoppers, you could be missing out on connecting with a major portion of your audience, according to Amber Leigh Turner of The Next Web. By kicking your static design to the curb and incorporating a more responsive alternative into your approach, you can shift and mold your page to the viewing consumer’s device, completing removing the threat of clunky desktop rendering on mobile platforms.

It’s Hard to Keep Your Site Updated

Even if you’re not sold on responsive designs and templates, a site that’s hard to keep updated – whether due to lack of knowledge or outdated tools – is another major red flag, Turner says. Instead of stubbornly sticking with a platform or template that’s better suited on display in a museum, consider looking into some more modern alternatives. Not only are these alternatives easier to update, you’ll generally find that newer designs offer more convenient, user friendly interface options that help make customization and personalization a breeze.

Dipping SEO Rankings

For those looking for a more objective reason for undergoing a website redesign, Nicole Denton of HubSpot suggests looking no farther than your current rankings with the major search engines. By sticking with dated options, like Flash, as the basis of your page, Google, Bing, and the other big names will have a harder time crawling your page. If you make it hard for these industry leaders to keep up with what you’re doing, don’t be surprised when they push you further down the results page.

Traffic Erosion and High Bounce Rates

Outside of search engine rankings, Denton also explains that breaking down your web analytics, specifically gross web traffic and bounce rates, can help point you in the direction of a digital face lift for your page. If your page is just fine, then watching traffic hold steady or increase while bounce rates drop should be expected. For those pages that are heading in the other direction, the numbers surrounding these stats never lie about the health of your site.

Outdated or Ugly Aesthetics

The final major sign comes from putting your page to the “eye test.” While you might have a long relationship with your current template or design, Michelle Hummel of Business 2 Community notes that older sites generally lack the proper aesthetic appeal to attract consumers – which is a nice way of saying older pages are usually ugly or unappealing.

Spending a few minutes looking over your page and being honest with your evaluation should let you know if your page passes the eye test or needs a little help in the graphic design department. When combined with what you learn from the other signs of an outdated or subpar page, you can start the process of building a plan for a more appealing and modern site that knocks customers off their feet.

About 4 Step Studio

4 Step Studio is an online marketing agency that specializes in website design and redesign, SEO, social media and more. Our team of experts focuses on helping small business get found online, while educating them on what will make them successful in the digital world. To learn more about what we can do for you, visit our website at www.4StepStudio.com