How Often Should I Update My Website? Reasons For Website Redesign

Nothing lasts forever. This applies to jobs, relationships, wealth, good health, and yes –even the design of your small business website.

How Often To Update The Website

If you want to keep your website relevant and updated, one of the most important things you need to remember is to keep your website fresh, you need to redesign it or at least make incremental changes on a regular basis. While there are many articles about how often your should update, including this one, it’s ultimately up to the company or business owner to decide when they want to redesign their website.

There are many reasons why people decide to redesign their websites. Maybe the old design isn’t generating leads, or perhaps people can’t view it on their mobile devices. Whatever the reasons for updating your website, on average you should give your website an update every 2-3 years.

Regardless of what information your website provides, people need to know that you’re active and that your website isn’t abandoned. Having a well-designed website that frequently updates will build trust and attract new visitors.

Reasons For Website Revamp

Updating your website is an important part of search engine optimization and branding efforts. You need to update your website when you have new products or services, and to show search engines that your site is still relevant.

Having an effective, user-friendly website can be a fantastic marketing tool, but if your visitors see the same design and content every time they visit, you’ll lose their interest. The reason for this is that once people have used your site and are aware of its existence, they won’t need to revisit it as often if it never changes. It’s your job to ensure that this doesn’t happen and that you keep your website interesting and relevant to your visitors.

Most people expect to see a beautiful design with crisp graphics and clear communication. If your website looks dated, it won’t be long until you lose more than just traffic from Google.

So how often should a website be redesigned? Below are some of the most common reasons for redesigning a  website – and why you should face any fears you have head-on and conquer them.

Your website looks outdated and unappealing

As we all know, first impressions last. With the average internet user’s short attention span, it’s important to give them a good experience so that not only will they stay on your site but they’ll also keep coming back to it –and there’s no chance of that happening when they look at an old design that does nothing to stimulate them and make them feel like they’re browsing a school or government-hosted website. Your website doesn’t have to keep its old design just because you liked the design the year you established your business or because you paid too much for the web designer. Remember, fads change and trends fade so give your website a fresh new look to attract new visitors to the site and to pique the interest of your regular customers/site visitors. 

Pages take too long to load

While we’re on the topic of short attention span, another clue that you badly need revamping the web design for your site is if your page takes too long to load. In your passion to create a website that is visually stimulating or highly engaging, you might have enlisted a skilled web designer to create animations for your site, poured your heart out to write detailed web content about your services, your humble origins, and stories about your experiences in the industry, or uploaded numerous high resolution photos about the products or services. Avoid the usual mistakes entrepreneurs make in having these unnecessary things that will just divert your site visitors from the key message you want to convey.

Your business goals have changed

If your original goals for your company have changed over the years, it’s only right to redesign your website to reflect your new goals, mission, and vision. To stay in the game, and be able to compete with the best in the industry, your business should be in a continuous process of improvement and change. Your website should also reflect your new goals and plans, since, the company website is the first place potential customers check before selecting a partner. So when you redesign, think of your website as a marketing tool, rather than a simple website.

Your website is missing a clear call-to-action

The ultimate purpose of having a website is to market your products/services, and although most people who go to your website already planned on making a purchase on your site, it wouldn’t hurt to give them a push in the right direction. Call-to-action buttons are essential for guiding your site visitors into taking action. Use call-to-action words as tools to let your readers know more about your products.

Among the best call-to-action words you can use are ‘buy now, ‘click here for more information, ‘download a free trial’, and ‘watch the video’.

Lack of leads and new customers

You may think that your website is great, and yet you’re wondering why you don’t seem to be getting many leads or new customers from your site. Keep in mind that a good website doesn’t stop at a great web design. This is where the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy comes in. Do you feel yourself judging a brand when you search for them online and come up with nothing? Exactly why you should go the extra mile to make sure your potential customers don’t feel the same about you or your brand. In coming up with a good SEO plan, try to think of the keywords your target market is searching for. This will help you develop content aligned with what your customers are searching for. Create a variety of content including blog posts, videos, social media posts, tips, and reviews.

Your website isn’t mobile-friendly

The use of laptops and desktop computers is not as popular as it used to be a couple of years ago. Smartphone use is now taking up 80% of internet usage, which just goes to show that the importance of mobile marketing is increasing at a rapid pace. Customers want the information to be available to them with just a few clicks, and they also get impatient when they don’t get the answers they need with a few quick searches on their mobile devices. As such, optimize your web design and web content in a way that makes it easy for the user to navigate and browse easily around your site -which ultimately makes it easier to earn a sale from them. Having a website that’s not optimized for mobile use will just drive potential customers straight to your competitors’ open arms, and we wouldn’t want that now… would we?

Confusing navigation interface

Nothing can be as frustrating as a website that has a confusing navigation interface. A good website design should be able to lead its visitors to the key pages and essential content of the site. Ensure that you have a clear and organized navigation interface so that your customers will immediately find what they visited your site for. Another tip is to make your web design responsive so that there won’t be too much difference on the look and feel of your website whether your customers are browsing from their mobile devices or their computers.

The website has broken links

A big turn-off for anyone browsing your site is getting the dreaded 404 error message. You have two possible solutions for this: You can design a nice, witty 404 page so that your website visitors won’t be as annoyed at you for not making your page work, or you can just ensure that every page on your site is working. Personally, I’d take the latter, but it may also be a good move to do both. But how do you know whether you have any pages on your site that are broken or not working? To make it easy to find the broken links and 404’s on your website, there are many back linking tools available that allow you to check for broken links

Now that you know what to look out for when it comes to website upgrades, it’s time to create a plan so you can update and improve your website to generate more business.

Interested in working together? We specialize in small business web design and redesign services. Give us a try.

Other resources to see if your website needs an update:

• 10 Signs it’s Time for a Website Facelift
• Should I Redesign My Website? Here are 5 Tell-Tale Signs
• Calling It Time For a Website Redesign
• How Often You Should Redesign Your Website
• 25 Signs That it is Time to Redesign Your Website

INFOGRAPHIC: Do I Need a Website Redesign?

 

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