Have you thought about reworking or refreshing your website, but you aren’t sure if it’s time? Maybe you’re wondering what your website refresh or rework should do, or you don’t have concrete goals in mind. Let’s take a look at a few reasons why you might rework your website, and what results you might achieve.
When Should You Rework Your Website?
There are a few clear signs that it’s time for a website redesign or refresh. If your website isn’t providing the functionality that you need, if it isn’t working for you as a digital marketing tool, or if it’s disorganized and driving customers away, it’s time for a website refresh. Here are a few clear signs that it’s time to rework or redesign your website:
- Missing functionality: If you want to start a blog, start an online store, make landing pages, or do other tasks, and your website is holding you back, it’s time to make a change.
- Driving customers away: If your website doesn’t have an SSL certificate, if it’s badly organized and hard to navigate, if it’s not mobile-friendly, or presents other issues, it may be driving potential customers away.
- No marketing benefits: If your website isn’t helping you attract customers and move them down the sales funnel, it’s not useful. Today, customers make many buying decisions online, and your website should be a valuable part of this.
Let’s take a look at a few of these situations in more detail.
Starting a Store
If you want to start an online store and your website doesn’t currently offer a good way to do so, this is a great time to rework your website. Shoehorning a new store into your current website might cause it to load slowly and drive traffic away, especially if your website is more than five years old. It might also be difficult to organize your online store into your current website. You’ll need to rearrange some of your links and your primary navigation, which can be difficult with some simple websites or templates.
Starting a Blog
A blog can be an important part of an SEO strategy. A well-written, well-researched blog can help you capture organic search traffic. This means, a user might land on your blog post if it answers their question or addresses their query. From here, you can then direct the visitor to a product or contact page, so they can gain further information about the solutions that you provide. An organic SEO strategy with a well-written blog can be a great way to get more traffic to your website without paying for digital ads, which have become increasingly expensive. If your current website doesn’t provide a clear way to author and post new content, it’s time for a website refresh.
Missing Important Information
Your website should give your customers some essential information about your business, such as your address, if applicable, hours of operation, how a customer might get in touch with you, what your business does, and why a customer should shop with you. If your website doesn’t currently provide this, or give you a way to make these important changes, it’s time for a website refresh.
Here’s a list of things that your website should probably have. If it doesn’t have these things, or if it’s difficult to find this information, it’s time for a website refresh.
- Address: Your address and how to find your business should be clear, unless your business is online-only.
- Contact: Whether your business is B2C or B2B or both, customers and clients should be able to contact you easily.
- Make a purchase or get a quote: Your website should make it easier for you to do business. Your potential customers should be able to buy your products, find out where they can buy your products, or get a quote on your website.
- Learn about your business: Your website should display basic information about your business, such as how long you’ve been in business, what products or services you are famous for, how many locations you have, or other things that stand out about your business.
- Read testimonials or reviews: Your website should provide a way for customers to do businesses with you, but it should also show them why they should. A testimonials or reviews page is a great way to make your products and services more convincing.
Security Vulnerabilities
Without the right security measures, your website and your visitors might be at risk. The right security measures help to prevent bad actors from accessing your site or planting malware. One of the most important of these is an SSL certificate. An SSL certificate adds the “S” in the “https” part of your URL or web address. If you don’t have an SSL certificate, your website is vulnerable to attack.
If you don’t have an SSL certificate, many browsers and cybersecurity applications will prevent users from accessing your site completely. The site is considered unsafe, and visiting it can prevent risks to the user. Users are likely to see an error message, and they’ll have to take extra measures to visit your site, which they’re unlikely to do.
Without an SSL certificate, potential web visitors might see an error message like this one, and they’ll be steered away from your site.
Outdated Technology
Online technology changes all the time. These technologies allow users to access websites faster, allow webmasters to display content with higher quality, allow for more functionality on all levels, and help to reduce cybersecurity vulnerabilities. This sometimes means retiring older technology that no longer meets users needs, or exposes users to malware. Unfortunately, these outdated technologies sometimes persist on older websites, which not only creates a negative user experience, but also exposes users and webmasters to cyber attacks.
Many web technologies to manage databases, show content, and even the programming languages that some applications are built on, have been retired. In some cases, this can cause error messages to appear where content should show up, like using the now-defunct Adobe Flash Player. In other cases, outdated technology can allow bad actors to access your website, your user’s information and more.
If your website hasn’t been updated in more than 5 years and you’ve noticed parts of your site that don’t operate the way they used to, there’s a chance you might be using outdated technology. It’s a good time to look into a website refresh!
Low Traffic
Google Analytics shows which landing pages, including blog posts, generate the most traffic. Go to Reports, then select Engagement, and Landing page. To view the entire year, change the dates in the upper right.
Your website should be your customers’ first stop if they’re researching your business online. Maybe they’re looking for simple information like your restaurant’s menu, or maybe they’re looking for something more complicated, like how to get a meeting and get a quote for a shipment. If your website isn’t getting much traffic, or you don’t know how to check how much traffic you’re getting, it’s time for a website rework.
Your traffic is a fairly simple indication of how well your website is accomplishing it’s job as your online ambassador. Though there are other metrics, such as clicks, conversions, dwell time, and much more, your overall traffic is a simple approximation of how much online attention your business is getting. If your website has low traffic, or isn’t equipped with the tools to measure traffic, it isn’t doing a very good job as an online marketing tool. And, it’s likely that customers are missing your business in favor of competitors with a clean, well-organized website that can answer their questions or queries.
These are just a few of the signs that you should rework your website. This might mean starting a totally new website with new programs and tools that will grow with you into the future. Or, it might mean refreshing your website, one step at a time, to modernize and reorganize it. As long as your website provides the value and functionality that you’re looking for, and it’s secure for you and your customers, there’s no wrong way to go about it!