How to Know It’s Time to Redesign Your Website
How Often Should You Redesign Your Website?
Here’s a question we hear a lot: “When should we redo our company’s website?” In fact, we heard it just last week on a call with a new client. It’s a good question and not always an easy one to answer. We thought about how we make recommendations to clients on this topic and decided to share those thoughts here. So, how often should you redesign your website?
First of all, we should all be paying constant attention to our websites, monitoring analytics and performance, making updates, adding content and tweaking our messaging when needed. If we do this, we can slowly and consistently make updates to our site to delay a complete overhaul. However, it’s very common to neglect websites as we get busy and other priorities move to the top of our list. This leads to a lazy, underperforming website. When this happens, sometimes the best approach is to take on a complete website redeseign, or at least a new look and feel or updated content. So when should you take on a website refresh?
If you answer NO to any of the following questions, you’ve probably got a website that isn’t performing as it should, meaning it’s time to seriously budget for a new website:
1. Does our website accurately reflect our business?
If you haven’t been making updates to the content of your site as your business has changed, then chances are, your site doesn’t even really say what it needs to say. Have you added new products or services? Gotten rid of others? Has your leadership team changed? Added new locations? All of this should be reflected on your site. If it isn’t, it’s time for a website refresh.
2. Does our website portray our brand well?
When you look at your site, does it give off the image you’ve curated for your brand? Design is an important part of this (the right colors, fonts, imagery, etc.), but copy is, too. Do the words you use align with the tone of voice you’ve established for your business?
3. Does our website answer the questions our prospects are asking?
When you talk to potential new customers, you likely hear some of the same questions over and over. The answers to those questions should be easily found on your site. If you have to hunt around for that information, it’s time to make some changes.
4. Does our website differentiate our business?
You want your company to stand out from the competition, and your website should be a key tool to do so. Many prospects will vet your company online first, and your site should help you jump to the top of the list. This can be accomplished through great design and great messaging – so if you’re lacking in either, you’ll want to fix that.
5. Does our website show up in searches?
Think of how you’d want to find your business in a Google search. Perhaps it’s through your industry and location or other more specific keywords. You definitely need to show up when your business name is searched. What about for key offerings in the geographical areas you serve? Is that happening? SEO is complicated, but it’s really important. Your site should be optimized and built to be keyword and Google-friendly.
6. Is Google happy with our site?
If your site is slow due to non-optimized images, links are broken, throwing errors with Google, it’s hard to find information or it isn’t responsive, you likely need some major updates on both the front and back end of the site. This item especially can mean you need a full site redesign from top to bottom.
So how many “no”s did you get? One or two, and you may be able to fix your issues with some minor web work. More than that, and it’s probably time to consider bringing someone in to help with a full website redesign, so you can turn that lazy, couch potato of a website into the hard-working tool it can be.
