Does Your Website Need an Overhaul?

A website overhaul may be necessary for a better user experience, increased traffic and conversions, and alignment with brand and business goals

We always tell our clients that your website is like your storefront. It’s probably the first thing they’ll see (especially if you don’t actually have a storefront). It’s a place they go for information. If they like what they see, they’ll do business with you. 

Your website is one of the foundational elements of your marketing strategy. Nothing will scare off your customers faster than a poorly designed website. Slow load times, bad user experience, bad stock images, misspellings — these are just a few of the things that can turn off a potential customer.

However, redesigning your website isn’t a task to take lightly. It requires a good deal of thought, time, and money, but the upside can be enormous. 

It’s important to note that “redesign” doesn’t necessarily mean you need to change every single one of your branding and graphic design elements. In fact, redesigns can just entail making functional modifications that help your website work better and assist you in reaching your marketing goals. 

While you can find many reasons not to revamp your site, here are seven great reasons why you should get your redesign plans off the ground.

7 Reasons to Give Your Website a Redesign

1) You aren’t getting the results you want.

Is your website gorgeous, functional, and pixel-perfect? Awesome! But if you still aren’t getting the results you want, it’s just useless web real estate. Your website exists to build your customer base, and your data should show you’re trending toward that goal. 

If you aren’t happy with your results, it’s time to redesign. Examining your site’s conversion rates — visitor-to-lead and lead-to-customer typically being the most important — can provide you with a clear idea of what needs to be adjusted on it. 

Here are a few questions you should ask yourself to guide your redesign process:

• Does your call-to-action convert visitors into leads and customers?
• Do your landing pages inspire people to learn more by digging deeper, or are they simply aesthetically pleasing pages that convey little value?
• Is your site too text-heavy or riddled with corporate-speak?
• Does your site’s look and feel match your company’s voice and speak directly to your target audience?

If you’re not sure, ask for Advent Trinity’s advice. We can scan your website to see how it’s functioning and suggest changes to make it more productive.

2) The purpose of your site has changed.

Your marketing strategy is fairly fluid and reflects changes in results. While you don’t need to do a full site redesign each time you adjust your marketing goals, it’s a good idea to check every so often to be sure your site is still aligned with your newest marketing plans. 

Ask yourself questions like:

• How often do you modify your marketing strategy?
• Do marketing strategy updates affect your conversion funnel?

If your site’s purpose has changed, update its layout to be more in line with your goals. For instance, if you’re new goals are now to provide more lead generation content (perhaps some “how-to” blog posts and ebooks), ensure you include CTAs on your homepage and other popular web pages.

3) Your website just doesn’t work.

You’ve probably stumbled on websites every now and then that are quite dysfunctional. Your site might not be on that level, but it might not be as user-friendly as it could be. The truth is there can be elements of a site that aren’t effective — and you may not realize they’re making your site less effective.

Functionality should be a paramount focus for you — if it’s not, your traffic and lead gen efforts could suffer. How you — and others you ask to test the site — answer these questions might point you in the clear direction of a redesign:

• Can a visitor readily find the most basic things on your site, such as contact information?
• Is your site navigation confusing?
• Is your important content hidden?
• Are your product and service offers completely up-to-date?

4) Your site isn’t responsive.

More than 17% of all web traffic comes from mobile devices. If your site isn’t mobile-friendly, the chances you’re losing leads and maybe even customers are high. Mobile users have made it clear they want to have a great UX (user experience) on their devices — the same ones they have on desktops — so this should be a chief priority for your company if it hasn’t already been made one. 

5) You want to incorporate a better content strategy.

Having informative content on your site can improve everything from customer retention to SEO — and with continuing changes to the algorithms of search engines, you’d be smart to implement a solid content plan. That said, quality content is useless if your visitors can’t readily find it.

If you’re planning to make some big changes to your content strategy (like boosting your blog production), a web redesign may be wise. That way, your great posts, ebooks, and other content are easily findable (and your leads database will grow the way you want it to). 

If you’re on the fence about a redesign in the name of your content strategy, ask yourself these questions:

• Can your customers easily find your content?
• Does your content incorporate calls to action?
• Can the search engines find and index your content?

6) Your competitors changed their site.

You don’t need to give your site an overhaul every time one of your competitors changes theirs. However, if they make changes that improve their rankings substantially and end up pushing you down in searches, it’s likely time to make some alterations to your site.

If you spend some time on a competitor’s site and realize it could meet your goals far better than your own site does, it’s time to roll up your sleeves and get busy. Maintaining an edge in search shouldn’t be your only goal, but if you’re not near the top of SERPs because competing business is keeping you from there, analyze what SEO adjustments you can make to your site.

7) Your third-party tools are outdated.

If your site is like most out there, you’ve embedded third-party tools that improve its functionality, such as shopping cart widgets. But, if some (or all) of these tools on your site aren’t up to modern functionality standards, try updating them. 

Ask yourself these questions to determine whether you need to replace or remove some tools:

• How are these third-party tools working?
• Are they slowing your site speed down?
• Are new-and-improved versions now available?

Nothing drives customers away like third-party tools that are outdated in terms of function or design or just don’t work correctly, so make the move to more modern ones that’ll not only appeal to your visitors but also turn them into leads.

How do I Redesign My Website?

Your website is meant to bring you business. If it’s not doing that, it’s time to determine why not and make the necessary changes.

Do you think you need to redesign your website? Scan your website for FREE to see what improvements you can make.

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By Leslie Radford