5 Signs It’s Time to Redesign Your Website
Did you know that your website should be your best seller?
Think about it. A good website should promote all your current products and services, as well as share in detail about the activities and pricing policy of the company. It attracts potential customers and answers all the questions they may have.
In other words, a website should convert cold leads into potential customers, as any seller does.
Just as you train your vendors and invest in them year after year, you need to periodically measure the effectiveness of your website and make the necessary changes and updates so that it can continue to successfully convert visitors. By analyzing a website, you can identify specific issues that will make you think about redesigning.
It is possible that visitors to your online store more and more often throw items into the basket and leave without buying. Maybe on mobile devices the failure rate is much higher than on desktop computers. These are just a few of the reasons why you may need to restructure your website.
Alliance Interactive is a top-rated website maintenance company based in Washington, D.C. with more than 17 years of experience in digital marketing and web design. The company is providing organizations increasing the performance of their websites by implementing security fixes and updates and operating day-to-day marketing and web support needs.
Why does your website need a redesign?
The reasons for redesigning a website vary depending on the specific marketing goals of your business. The most common of these are website rebranding, increased traffic, more lead generation, and enhanced functionality to improve user interaction.
Your business goals will determine the scale of the redesign. If you have implemented minor changes, then a small update may be enough for the website: change the color palette, swap a few photos, and you’re done. If you have reviewed your marketing strategy, you may need to switch to a content management system with the functionality and settings needed to completely transform the design of your website.
To better understand what is going on in the redesign process, let’s take a closer look at the most common goals and what you need to do to achieve them.
1. Your website needs rebranding
It is important that the website has a consistent appearance. If a person clicks on a link from the main page and gets to a page that looks completely different, he may be confused or even decide that he was redirected to a more valuable website. Even small differences, for example, differing navigation menus in different sections, can disappoint visitors.
Such inconsistencies in design are quite common, in particular, on websites that have merged with other microsites and are edited by different authors. If your website has evolved significantly over the last few years, it may be time to revise and implement brand rules and styles to help create a consistent look. We are talking about the choice of color palette, fonts, typographic hierarchy, button styles, iconography, and many other design elements.
2. You want to increase web traffic
The great design of your site will not matter if no one sees it. To attract traffic, you need to optimize it for search. A great way to achieve this is by adding a blog as a part of your content strategy. Websites with a blog are more likely to get high rankings in search engines.
When developing a blog strategy, you will need to research keywords to determine what specific words and phrases people use in their search queries. They must be included in the headlines, website header, article texts, page meta-descriptions, and URL. As you fill the blog, you can link new posts to existing pages and posts relevant to the topic. This will help search engines and visitors to understand the relevance, value, and relationship between the content on your site.
If you have already created your website on a publishing platform or with a website builder, you may need to move to a CMS with more advanced content management features. To do this, you can use platforms with built-in SEO tools that help optimize content.
3. You want to convert more visitors into leads
If you drive a lot of traffic to your website and want to convert visitors into leads, you need to develop a design with a clear conversion strategy. Your website should tell people who you are, what you do, and who you consider your target audience. It must then persuade them to take the next step on the path to becoming a client.
If you want to improve conversions, check to see if your current platform supports integration between the site and software to automate marketing or CRM. Otherwise, you will need to upgrade to a CMS with built-in tools to increase conversions.
4. You want to expand a website functionality
Your website should be simple, clear, and easy to navigate.
As traffic grows, you will probably need to expand the functionality of the site to meet the growing expectations and needs of customers. For example, you may need to add live chat, create and manage multilingual content, or run A / B tests right on the dashboard. This can be done by improving the website interface and personalization so that visitors can find what they were looking for as quickly and easily as possible. Among other changes, the navigation system can be simplified to create a flawless user experience, and smart filters can be added to sort content.
If you want to add smart filters or other features to your website, you need a platform that has robust built-in functionality and flexibility to integrate with external software. It can continue to be used as the site grows.
5. You want to adapt your website to mobile devices
In 2019, mobile devices accounted for 58% of organic traffic. Since portable platforms are very popular, search engines have adapted to them. If you try to find something in Google from your phone, you will first see the search results for mobile pages. Therefore, you need to make sure that your website is optimized for both desktop and mobile devices.
Mobile friendly is a website optimized for viewing from a mobile device. Mobile friendly optimization means:
- The website is located in a strictly defined frame on the mobile phone
- The photos are adapted for viewing on a mobile phone
- The font size is adjusted for reading on a mobile phone
- Navigation is easily accessible to the user
- The user experience is great, everything is easily accessible and organized in a logical way, and easy to navigate in a simple scrolling experience.
For websites that are not mobile friendly the reviews are, unfortunately, very bad. You have to use your fingers on the mobile device to zoom in on the content to read it, and you also have to move the page left and right so that you can read the sentences, which is tedious for website visitors and will negatively affect traffic to your website.
Redesigning a website takes time, effort and investment, but it can be critical to the success of your online business. Carried out in accordance with the general business strategy of the company, it will help to increase the conversion rate, increase the rating, and meet the needs of your online visitors.