If you are any kind of business owner, we can take a pretty educated guess that you already have yourself a website up and running. But, is it time for the long-overdue redesign that you might keep putting off thinking about?
Putting usability aside for a second, topics such as security, SEO, and conversion rates are all critical to any small and medium-sized businesses.
With phrases such ‘new normal’ being thrown about a lot these days, the website for your business is now more important than ever to be up to date and help drive those all-important leads and sales. Customers will now research, compare, and purchase products online more than ever before. A website redesign can help keep up with the ever-changing behaviors of consumers and will hopefully maximise the results you get online.
To help you make the right decision. We have put together a quick guide, learning about the overall benefits of opting for a website design.
What Is a Website Redesign?
A complete overall website redesign implies pretty much rebuilding your existing website from scratch again, starting with the code through to the final touches of appearance. In a similar fashion to if you had a physical shop or office and redesigned that, with a website redesign you will ultimately improve the overall look and feel of your website, enhance it with any new features which have appeared on the market since you last designed your site and should ultimately drive in better business results.
You might also choose to opt for a particle website redesign, this will tend to overhaul just the backend or frontend components.
So, How Often Should You Be Redesigning Your Website?
In an ideal world, you should be looking at evaluating a redesign every 3 – 5 years. This however all depends on what your site currently looks like along with your industry standards, audience, and any evolutions in technology and design which have come about since your last site launch.
Also, if you notice that your site isn’t performing as expected this is also another key factor that something needs to be refreshed.
Don’t just use a calendar to come up when it’s time for a redesign or to start implementing changes. This is the perfect time to start digging into your data and analytics which will give you a great look at any issues going on in regards to rankings, traffic, and conversion rates.
Top Benefits of a Website Redesign
As with any business decision, there will always be some evaluation that’s needed for a redesign based on its returns to even determine if it’s going to be a worthy investment.
1. Improves The Branding
An updated site will help reinforce the consistency of your brand. With a modern design, a website will promote that all-important trust and recognition amongst consumers which is why a site overhaul could end up doing wonders for building up brand initiatives.
Potential customers that find your business while searching on the web will use the overall design and quality of your site to pretty much evaluate if they are going to trust you as a company or not. We get that this sounds extremely judgemental but unfortunately, it’s just how these things seem to go… First impressions matter. Fact!
Let’s say your site appears cheap and outdated, it’s slow and things just keep breaking it can be a major turn-off for potential customers. On the other hand, a complete redesign will help keep your business relevant, enhance your brands’ images, and even get ahead of any competition.
2. Creates Better Search Rankings
A well-designed website means better SEO. Your site’s redesign should be taking search engine optimization into account from every aspect right from the code through to its end responsiveness.
Ultimately, this means your new site should help you climb up in the SERPs, scoring you that much loved organic traffic and not having to invest so much in Ads.
Once a person clicks on your link and witnesses a modern-looking site they’re more than likely going to want to stick around for a while. Having optimised website structure visitors will browse through the site with ease, want to check out more pages, and reduce that bounce rate!
Finally, a well-designed site can also help attract more backlinks, this in turn can give you a stronger push for even higher Google rankings and additional referral traffic.
3. Information Flow Gets Vastly Improved
The core goal of your website’s content is to help any potential customers learn more about your business, products, and services and ultimately help close a deal.
Whether it’s information on your company, your founder’s story or just educating on your products or service you offer. A Website’s main purpose here is to provide information that prods visitors to take the desired action which in most cases is to make a successful conversion.
Most people will expect to find the information they’re looking for to be right there in front of them and don’t want to be going on a wild goose chase trying to find an answer to a question. To persuade visitors to consider your offerings and become paying customers you need to have an optimal information flow.
This tends to be where a lot of sites fail. With a website redesign, you can overall do your best to help structure and present information in a way that all the important stuff is easy to find as users organically from one page to the next.
4. Generating More Leads Equals More Sales
Completing a website overhaul will tend to result in more leads and sales, this is down to the implementation of cutting-edge conversion optimisation techniques.
At the end of the day, converting visitors is the ultimate goal for any site, this can be anything from purchasing a product, signing up for a subscription or newsletter, or collecting data such as their email address or phone number.
With a website redesign, you can make conversion the primary focus, and will be done by presenting a flow of information that funnels them to convert.
5. Increase Revenue and Reduce Costings
By overall improving your brands’ consistency, boosting your rankings, and funneling visitors through to a conversion, a website redesign will help increase that revenue.
When choosing to complete a redesign, you’ll get the opportunity to re-evaluate your hosting and CMS (Content Management System). Also, a new site will more than likely run a lot faster and more efficiently, taking up less space on your server.
When looking at your costing, in the long run, a redesign will be more cost effective. If you just take the ‘band-aid’ approach and start adding in more plugins to try and fix those functionality issues on your already existing site, a complete overhaul and start over is a much better option.
Our Best Reasons Why Your Business Needs a Redesign
Now we have looked over the potential benefits of investing in a redesign, it’s time to talk a bit more about you and your business. If you find any of these points below to ring true then a redesign soon should be in your near plans.
1) Your Site is NOT Mobile Responsive
Did you know that last year, over 52% of all internet traffic originated from Mobile Devices?
With over 5 billion people around the world carrying on in their pockets, you must ensure your business’ website provides a seamless experience on mobile devices.
When we say seamless, we mean seamless and don’t just fall for the “it looks okay”. A mobile-friendly site should offer just as great (if not better) user experience as your desktop site does, including having a great structure and information flow.
If that’s not a good enough reason to think mobile-first, just keep in mind that poor performance on mobile devices can also seriously hinder your SEO and organic traffic.
2) You Have a Slow Site Speed
Website users hate to wait, people on the internet, in general, tend to be impatient as we have high expectations of loading speeds when it comes to visiting a new site. Slightly less will leave your site immediately if it doesn’t load within 3, if we start getting into double figures then let’s just not go there.
When it comes to user experience, SPEED MATTERS!
While there are things that you can be implemented to help speed up load times to an old site, issues causing low loading are often deeply ingrained in your website’s design and coding.
For those lightning-fast websites, you need to design it with speed at the forefront of your mind and not just an afterthought. Since most of the internet traffic comes from mobile users, one important factor to consider that mobile users is even less patient.
3) Issues With User Experience
Your websites’ user experience should be a primary decision when looking if your website is to scratch.
Think of your websites’ UX as a part of the overall customer experience. Both of these need to be optimised to stay competitive and maximise results online.
If your visitors are struggling to find information, unable to use all your site’s features, stumbling across broken or missing functionalities, or just generally suffer through an un-intuitive UX, you urgently need a website redesign.
4) Your Current Sits Has An Outdated Design
Does your website just scream 90’s! It’s time to redesign. We get that sometimes having that ‘vintage’ look may be good for fashion but when it comes to website design, people want cutting edge.
More users are becoming extra discretionary about the sites they visit and knows there’s always a good looking website in that niche.
As humans, we are always going by first-impressions and a company’s website is no different. This means outdated and clunky designs are associated with being ‘untrustworthy’ and give out the wrong impression from the get-go.
5) Evolving Industry
Changes within your industry and target audience all call for a website overhaul. Shifts in trends and customer preferences will dictate what’s considered as appealing and will essentially drive those results.
You might be starting to notice competitors and industry leaders adding in new functionality or design elements You might learn that customers now also expect certain features and types of content.
Without following industry trends, it means you’re presenting a website that was built with entirely different parameters in mind. Visitors and potential customers might end up perceiving your business as out of touch which isn’t a great position to be in.
Even the smallest details such as the wording and colours of your CTA or the imagery you chose to use could be throwing off your present-day audience.
We’re not here telling you that you should be jumping on every single bang wagon going around. Be strategic and when a new industry trend does emerge ask yourself these two questions.
If you’ve answered YES to any of those questions, contact your web design team now!
6) The Purpose Of Your Site Has Changed
Another common reason why you may be looking to redesign your site is that your business goals have changed or altered slightly.
Amidst the pandemic, more and more businesses have moved their operations online, and that likely means your site now has different goals than it did this time last year.
On the other hand, you may now be focused on lead generation whereas before it was driving sales. It’s also more than possible that you started with a DIY or templated website which you feel like you’ve just outgrown now. If the templates or themes are just too restrictive for your new site goals then it is time to explore a design that allows for more customizations.
7) You’ve Switched Up Your Brand
A brand update is another compelling and rather obvious reason to look at a redesign. You could have made changes to:
You probably already know that your website is the core of your business’s digital presence that significantly impacts your brand and its overall perception. Be instantly recognisable by staying consistent across all marketing channels and customer touchpoints.
Your business’s website is pretty much the only place on the web where you have complete control over how your brand is presented. Unlike social media where the platforms have visual control where you must adapt your content to their format.
Your website is your hub and the one place where users know that every decision is up to you, so it should reflect your brand consistently.
So there you have it. A semi – brief outline of the key points you should be looking for should a website design be on the horizon for your business in 2021.
Here at Cold Banana we live and breathe websites and can help you accomplish your website dreams. We are always here to help and can bring your ideas into your brand’s reality.
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