When Should You Consider a Website Redesign
A well built and designed website should last and be an agent of profit to a company for years. Now, whether this is few or many years really depends on the company itself and the changing winds of its goals, market needs, competition, offerings, etc. However, there are times when a redesign should be considered imminently. Here are top 5 reasons why a company should consider a redesign of their website.
Reason #1: Cheap Web design or DIY service was used
This one is quite obvious and happens too many times. A cheaply done website feels just that: cheap. It is usually boxy, has poor color, layout, minimal content, to name just a few things. Above all, these websites get very little results on the search engines. When a company opts to use a DIY (or Do-It-Yourself) service, the resulting site is usually bare in content and looks like it was built on a cheap or free template. Furthermore, such a company likely has zero knowledge of SEO (Search Engine Optimization), so traffic from search engines will be non-existent or extremely low and non-targeted at best. If this was your first option, then having a website redesigned by a professional can have monumental benefits to your business: search engine traffic, professional design across all platforms, much higher conversion rate, project an image you can be proud off.
Reason #2: Your website is too difficult to navigate
Sometimes websites are so rushed to completion or built back when user experience took a back seat to page prettiness. The result is that content has been placed in a non-coherent or non-logical manner that makes it very difficult for visitors to find the information they are looking for. Additionally, years ago the prevalent practice was to make text and navigation elements small resulting in making these very difficult to read, especially on smaller screens such as tablets that are in popular usage today. Another problem is with outdated code on navigation that makes it difficult to click on drop-down menus, etc. If any of this is the case with your website, then updating the design, content, and navigation will make sense and result in greater conversion rate as well as better search engine indexing.
Reason #3: Your website is too difficult to update
If your website is a static design then updating the content is difficult and expensive because you need to call your Web designer every time you want to update your site. Today content is more important than ever and should be updated on a regular basis to keep the website fresh and climbing on the search engine results pages. For example, you may want to have a blog section on your website that you can update weekly or daily even, you may want to update the website with most recent products or customer testimonials. In such a case, it makes sense to redesign your website and having it built on a content management system (CMS). A CMS will allow you to access your site and edit the content without effecting the design elements. This also will make the site less costly to redesign in the future, if you wish, since all the content will be preserved as it will be kept separate from the design aspects.
Reason #4: Your website has old code and error pages
Was your website designed back when Web standards were weak and not followed very often? Have some pages been removed over time due to them being irrelevant and no longer needed while the links have not been updated? Has some of the code stopped working because the server side language has been updated many times over the years (i.e. your contact form)? If this is true in your case then a complete redesign makes sense. You can take this opportunity to build a fully functional website that is Web standards compliant and has code that is compatible with today’s much more secure sever side code.
Reason #5: Your website was hacked
This may be a complete hack where your website has been totally defaced or, it may be the more common hack where code has been injected into your site or unwanted links placed to unsavory websites (such as pornographic or gambling sites). If this is the case then your website is very outdated and has very poor security. Strong measures must be taken, which should include redesign consideration.
Conclusion:
These are just 5 reasons where website redesign should be considered. There obviously are more but these are the 5 we feel are major reasons and probably most common ones. The final decision lies with you whether redesign is right for you. Timing and your marketing strategy will have a lot of weight on your decision. As in anything in life, the old adage is also true in Web design, “You get what you pay for”, so a thorough research should be taken of any company considered to redesign your website. You need to ask yourself: “Would I prefer to burn $300 or invest $3000?”
