One of the most debated questions within small businesses in regard to digital marketing is, when should you redesign your website? This can be a bit of a tricky question, as there are some obvious answers and well… not so obvious answers. In certain cases, it makes sense to fully redesign your website and other cases where it might be better to tweak your website rather than scrap it and start over. Let’s dive into this curious question of when should you redesign your website. Let’s start with when it is obvious you should redesign your website.
Your Website is Not Responsive or Mobile Friendly.
Folks, this is 2021, when it seems everyone (or just about everyone) has a smartphone in their pocket. And yet, there are still websites that are either not responsive or mobile-friendly. If this is you and you are wanting to make money off the web (via web leads, appointments, or sales) it should be an absolute priority to redesign your website.
When Your Branding has Changed
If you have made significant branding changes to your business, such as a new logo that looks completely different or uses completely different colors, you should get a new website design. Now, we are not talking just small tweaks to your logo here, but significant changes where your business has a different look and feel.
Your Website Does Not Work.
If major parts of your website do not work, it’s probably time for a new site design. Again, we are not talking small parts of your site that might need repair, but major parts of your site such as whole pages not showing up and you have already tried to fix the issue.
Those are all signs that you should redesign your website. Yet, there are other times where it may not be so obvious. When your website is not where it should be, yet you’re not sure whether it warrants a full redesign or just needs some good ole fashion tweaking. Let’s walk through a few examples and how to decide whether some changes to your existing website would be enough.
Your Site is not Converting.
Let’s say you have a website, and it does not look half bad. You know it’s not the best, but you have looked at your competitors and found it’s not the worst either. There is just one slight problem, you are getting traffic but not getting leads from your website.
In this scenario, it would probably be best to focus on parts of your website, rather than getting a whole redesign. First, gather user data in order to make data-driven decisions instead of just winging it. Use an analytics tool such as Google Analytics and a hot map tool like HotJar. This can give you a sense of where your visitors are going and scrolling to on your website.
You Have Not Updated Your Website in a Few Years.
This scenario does not apply to not updating the coding/technical aspects of your website like plugins. Instead, we are looking at not updating the design or main content of your website. The general consensus is that you should update your website’s look every two to three years. Though in truth, that may not be practical. This is where you would have to look at a few factors.
- Has traffic dropped off from your website?
- Do your competitors have a more modern website?
- Does your website stay consistent with viewer’s expectations?
The reason why the general consensus is that you should update your website’s look every two to three years is that usually one, if not more of these three things, do change over the course of that time. However, just because your website is a couple of years old does not automatically put it in need of a full redesign. If you are in an industry that is full of horrible site designs (yes, I have seen this happen) and the data suggests that some tweaks are a better option, you might be able to get away with just doing some design and content tweaks here and there. It could also be a case of how focusing on Search Engine Optimization and Conversion Optimization might be a better placement of time and resources since they both also have to do with the site design and content.
In truth, there are many cases whether to get a full website redesign or focusing on tweaking and optimizing your website is not a cut-and-dry decision. As you can see, it takes looking at several factors and then ultimately looking at the answers and seeing if your current website, with some changes and optimizations, would meet your expectations.
Hughbanks Design offers a free, comprehensive website analysis where we will analyze your website, listen to what your goals are, and offer actionable steps to get the needle moving on your website.