It feels like only yesterday that you invested a good amount of time and budget into creating your website, but is it time to do it again? Is your website still as effective as it was when it was first published?
Technology on the web is a constant evolution and if your site has not been updated in the last few years, you may be missing out on an opportunity to increase its value.
A redesign is not just updating the graphics and making your site look modern and beautiful. While up-to-date and professional looking design is an important part of a website, it also needs to have current code standards, be built with search engine optimization in mind, contain current interactive features, feature outstanding content and be well laid out so users can find what they need quickly.
Let’s start with design since that is what a user first sees when they open your website.
Does your website still reflect your visual brand? If your marketing items such as brochures, business cards or mailers have changed in design, so should your website. It is important to keep a constant look and feel to all of your marketing pieces. Brand recognition is what makes people remember you.
How does your site look compared to your competitor’s website? If your site is a mix of red and green text on a pure white page with a large .gif image of a reindeer running in place in the center of your blinking navigation….it is a good presumption that your competitors are going to get what would have been your business! Users tend to trust sites that are nice to look at. Think about when you go to purchase something online, would you trust the running reindeer with your credit card number, or do you look for a site that looks a bit more professional? Most people are not going to have confidence in the reindeer and head straight for your competitor’s website.
It is important that with a redesign, your site still maintains a bit of the same branding as the previous site. If you do have valuable returning costumers, a drastically different looking site might confuse them.
The design catches the users’ attention, but does your content keep them from leaving your website?
A website could be the most beautiful thing you have ever seen, but if it is not easy to navigate or does not have quality content, users will leave.
Can a user who has never been to your website find what they are looking for quickly? If a user has to click around aimlessly to find something, they are going to give up and go to your competitor’s site. Does a user, who has never been to your website, immediately know on the home page what your company does? If the main focus of your website is to sell a product online, does your home page (and supporting interior pages) point the user to your online store in an obvious manner?
Content gets added on over the years and can become repetitive and sometimes useless. If your content is not fresh and well written, users will leave. How does your content look compared to your competitor’s website? Is it time to clear out and clean up text?
Do your users want to come back?
Would you want to re-visit your website? Is there a reason to? If your content remains static and you do not have interactive features such as user log-ins, blogs, realty listings, event calendars, form submitions, etc., you are not giving users a reason to come back and check out other products or services you may offer.
Behind the scenes code standards are also very important, even though you cannot see them.
HTML and other web codes are always changing for the better. Tags that were used only a few years ago such as font tags are now depreciated. Depreciated elements are outdated. They still work, but there are better ways to do what the depreciated element did. There is a rumor that depreciated tags will eventually not work in future browsers, but no one knows for sure.
The code in a site should also be structured correctly and contain SEO elements such as title tags and meta data. Every page should have depreciating header tags with keywords to outline important sectioned data. Navigation items should be in list format and created as text when possible.
Now what?
If you question the appearance and / or effectiveness of your current website, it may be time for a redesign, or even a few simple updates. We would love to talk to you about your current website and find out if there is anything we could do for you. Please call us at 406.837.3334.