How do I know when it’s time to redesign my website?

Do I need to redesign my website?

One of the worst things a company can do with their website is get complacent about it. Consider your website as a direct extension of your business. For many people, your website will serve as the first point of contact. If your website’s news feed hasn’t been updated for months or your design looks seriously outdated, your company sends the message that it is slow, stale and not up to speed with the market. Customers will look elsewhere.

Personally, I’ve redesigned my website three times in twelve years. Originally my purpose was primary to share a portfolio. As time went on I wanted to share more content and create a more interactive social media portal.

Blue Rose Design PDX | design used 05-09

Why might you need a website re-designed?

Your website is a key tool to enable your business to reach out to many thousands of potential prospects over the web and it needs to be updated and improved upon on a continuous basis to ensure that you have your best foot forward.

1. You have a template website. You chose a template website because everyone else urged you to have a website, but now you want to take advantage of the internet to see what it can really do for your business. Working with a professional website designer who can build a site for success can help you implement a solid web marketing strategy that will help increase your business.

2. Your website lacks consistency. Although it may not seem like it, consistency in major elements on all pages of your site is a must. Elements like navigation, fonts and colors, URL format, and editorial style should show consistency throughout your website as it shows your professionalism and attention to detail when conducting business. This is known as subliminal marketing.

3. Your website looks old-school. Website technologies are evolving at an exponential pace and online – styles do too. Whatever style was hot back in ’05 probably isn’t what’s hot right now.

4. Your website needs better organization. One of the main reasons that you may want to consider getting a website redesign is because your website is currently disorganized. Chances are that there is information scattered throughout your entire website, without a cohesive marketing strategy. If this is the case, then chances are that people may not understand your website when they do decide to visit. By deciding to redesign your website, you could be making a huge difference in the success of your business.

5. Your website is riddled with typos, mismatching font sizes, text that runs of the page and non-loading images.

6. The products/services which we sell are not updated online and lead to confusion when we meet our clients.

7. Your website is not built on W3C web standards. W3C is the abbreviation of The World Wide Web Consortium (three Ws and a C, so W3C). This is the group of people who are considered to be “in charge” of the Internet, and decide what gets put in and taken out of the versions of HTML, amongst other things.

8. Your website is not search engine optimized and doesn’t rank well on the search engines. Page ranking is based on many factors. Please see link for more details.

9. My website developer is unable to work on my website and I need to work with another developer.

10. Your website is 100% flash based. Before, flash animations cannot be indexed by search engines. These days, flash-based articles can be seen by Google, if optimized with keywords correctly. However, both potential customers and search engines still want a website to open quickly. If your website is full of clunky flash pages that take forever to open, your audience may be seeking products and services elsewhere, so it’s time for a website redesign.

11. Your website doesn’t render properly across all browsers. Firefox does not display web pages exactly the way Internet Explorer does. Many of the differences can be fixed when using a stylesheet and proper W3C coding.

12. Your website is not ready to handle online transactions. The more transactions your website can process that don’t require personal intervention the larger your business can grow. Once online transactions are setup it’s simple to manage which enables you to focus on sales and marketing rather than the logistics of order payment. By accepting credit card payments you are also improving your cash flow by getting payment at the time of the order.

13. Your website doesn’t have a “call to action.” A call to action is a button used to urge viewers to take action. Examples: buy now, contact forms, downloads, newsletter sign-ups, or sale.

So, how’d your website do?