Let’s get right into it…
1. Make your website mobile friendly
This is probably the most common reason clients come to us for a re-design. For a few years now Google gives ‘mobile friendly’ websites a higher ranking in its search results over desktop only websites (if searching on a smartphone or tablet). As of 2016 people search for services on their mobile devices more than any other device – making this design decision a no-brainer. Also worth noting here is Google’s mobile-first indexing – you can read all about that here.
2. Your website is starting to show its age
A website is part of your brand and where a lot of potential customers will see you first. So it’s important the site looks sharp, modern and up-to-date (as your business is). Visual tell-tale signs could be small basic fonts, small rigid page layouts, not mobile friendly (see 1), dated stock photography styling/filters, flash/Giffs (instead of HTML/CSS animations). Along with the visual cues, perhaps the code rendering the website’s backend needs updating i.e. slow page load times, metadata (OG social metadata?), Google’s structured data, SCHEMA.org, the framework may also need a refresh and so on. A more obvious reason would be if you are going through a company re-branding then, of course, the website would need to reflect this too.
3. The website’s on-site Search Engine Optimization is out-of-date
How’s the website ranking on search engine results pages (SERP)? Have you grown, offering bigger and better services – does the current website properly reflect this in terms of information and search engine optimization (SEO)? Are your keywords still relevant? Does the SEO reflect the latest SEO protocols created by God – opps, I mean Google? This may not involve a visual redesign but updating and improving a website’s onsite SEO can really help those new services get found, or help improve page rankings on popular search engines. These are all really good reasons to have a website updated. We offer a free SEO review service – contact us for more details.
4. The website is not converting as well as it should
Perhaps your website does well in SERP but you are not seeing click-throughs or healthy conversion rates (how many users actually get in-touch or create business via the website), if it’s lower than expectations, then it may be time to reconsider a general re-design (front and backend) including; layouts, page descriptions (Meta Data), calls to action, tone, copy. A good starting place here would be setting up a service like Google Analytics so you see what visitors do on your website ie; what pages they visit, what pages they don’t, the most popular pages, where a visitor does or does not click and so on, we can then intelligently streamline a new design to help that all important conversion and click-through rate.
5. Competitors have moved on – perhaps you should too
Last but not least – it’s always good to know what your competitors are up too, right? Are they doing something you are not? Are they stopping you from reaching the top of search or offer a service that’s seeing good conversion rates? Of course you don’t need to change your website every-time a competitor does, but if they are beating you in SERP or conversion rates, then it could be worth looking at what it is they are doing so you can better.
Any of the above are really strong reasons to give your current website new lick of paint. Feel free to contact us for a free, no obligation chat. Cheers!
