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A digital presence has never been more important. Websites have become companies’ most powerful marketing and communication tools, so you must prioritize keeping your website design up-to-date.
Outdated websites that are difficult to navigate are not designed for a positive, human-first, user experience, drastically hurting your brand. So, how do you know if your website is ready for a redesign?
Well-designed and user-friendly sites keep users engaged, promote conversions and improve your brand image.
Responsive web design ensures your web pages are optimal on all types of devices. Users expect to be able to view your website on any device — mobile, tablet or desktop. Your website needs to be responsive to the user’s behavior and environment based on screen size, platform and orientation, particularly for mobile.
Users live on their phones. The average person checks his/her phone over 96 times a day. If a site is not mobile-friendly, it makes it very difficult for users to navigate, which can cause you to lose out on over 50% of your user base.
You are ready for a new website design if you have low conversion rates. A site redesign can help resolve the tensions a user may be experiencing in order to drive them to convert.
A poor user experience will reflect in your conversion rates whether you are an eCommerce site or you have set goals, like tracking user sign-ups for exclusive content. Users are either not finding what they are looking for, or the site is too difficult to navigate.
If your website is difficult for your users to navigate quickly and efficiently to find the information they came to your website for, it may be time for a website redesign. All pages on your site should be easily accessible, but there are certain key pages that are crucial for users to be able to find easily:
If these pages, in particular, are hard to get to, it’s a red flag that your website is in need of a redesign and restructure.
Difficult navigation is hard for Google to crawl, causing problems with your search engine optimization (SEO), which decreases your website’s ranking in Google search results. If users cannot find the information they are looking for, this will likely result in a bounce.
A bounce rate is the percentage of people who leave your site in a short period of time. If you have a high bounce rate, your users are not finding what they are looking for. You can find your bounce rate by reviewing your website on Google Analytics, which provides additional insights on how your website is performing.
If you have a high bounce rate, revise the site structure for user experience (UX), look and feel for user interface (UI) and content for information architecture. This can help provide users with a better journey and ability to find the content they are looking for.
If all aspects of your website are not user-friendly, it’s time for a new website design to really optimize on advancing technology to create the best user experience.
When was the last time you redesigned your website? Does your site’s first impression look like it’s from 2000? Then, your web design is not giving your users or customers the best first impression. An outdated site is another quick way to a high bounce rate. Users are more likely to trust companies that have a modern and updated site.
If your site is cumbersome and hard to use from an administrative perspective, it could be time to reinvest in an upgraded platform that can support your needs. Today’s technologies and CMS platforms, such as WordPress, make it a breeze to make updates to a website.
Frequently updated content is key to ensuring your website is fresh, which helps with SEO rankings. Being able to make these types of changes quickly on your site can help you rank higher in search engine results.
If your site does not rank towards the top and on the first page, users will most likely never find you because typical users will not look beyond the first page of search engine results.
Google is the number one used search engine. If your site contains outdated information or is not mobile-friendly, then a redesign is necessary to improve your SEO ranking to drive more traffic to your site. With the rise of GA4, the technicality of SEO and marketing analytics is about to be revolutionary!
Users are impatient (especially on mobile) and do not want to wait more than a few seconds for a website to load. Slow site loading speed will turn users away and is a huge red flag that you are ready for a new web design. Using up-to-date technology can provide your users with a website design that is more engaging and faster to use.
As your company grows, your website should too. Users should be able to clearly understand what type of business you are and what you stand as soon as they land on one of your pages. Each web page should impact the user and exemplify your visual brand, also emphasizing how you are helping your customers.
If you’re on the edge of not knowing whether you want to commit to a website redesign, keep in mind that when competitors redesign their site, they have the opportunity to look more attractive, function better and share more relatable information. In doing so, they divert traffic away from your site.
If any of these points apply to your website design, it’s time to reach out to our St Louis web design team. Integrity can design an optimized user experience for your industry. Our experts rely upon data-driven designs to make your website easy to manage and update for better results.
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