7 key indicators your website needs an update

March 4, 2021

7 key indicators your website needs an update

Nowadays, every company has a website for its customers’ convenience, especially since the internet is the leading platform for getting to know brands. With everything on the internet nowadays, businesses with no online presence can potentially lose marketing opportunities to generate new customers. And with a highly visual medium, your image needs to be at a level that people appreciate.

To stay ahead of the competition, you need to update your website’s design to modern standards. If you’re unsure about how current your website actually is, here are some clear signs that your website needs a makeover.

7 Signs You Need to Improve Your Web Design

1. Your Website Is Still Static

When the internet was still young, people would have websites for the sake of having sites. The most cost-effective way to have a website was to get a static one, which is just as good as having a Friendster account. If your website is only a page long and doesn’t have much “life” and functionality, then it’s time to bring in a web developer designer to fix that.

The top-performing websites to date are responsive; when you click a button, it should redirect you to different pages on the website. A creative agency can use your same domain name and work on other pages’ designs to breathe back life to a drabby website.

2. Your Homepage Features Low-Quality Stock Images

Using low-quality images from the public domain cheapens your website’s appearance, especially if it is a focal point on the home page. Replace those with imagery and graphic design that are custom-made for your website. The more effort shown in the design, the more people will assume your offerings are legitimate and high-quality.

3. You spend more time updating your Content Management System than publishing content

Content management systems such as WordPress, Joomla and Webflow are essential to a functioning website. These keep track of all the web content on every page. That includes webpage content, metadata, and blog posts. However, most CMS like Wordpress and Joomla require constant security and functionality updates to make sure they are still safe and user-friendly. Before you know it, you are spending more time downloading and installing these (or paying someone else to) than you actually spend publishing content! That's why we're a Webflow agency. We use Webflow for 100% of our websites (we trust it that much), not only because you never have to worry about downloading and installing updates (because they do it automatically) but because of a whole host of other features.

4. You Haven’t Updated the Blog

Contrary to what most companies might think, having a blog is entirely essential. Blogging keeps the website updated continuously, earns you traffic, and increases your website’s visibility. Most successful websites regularly update their blogs.

5. Your Design Is Outdated and Dull

From colour scheme to font, if it looks like a website that was created years ago, it will look like spam to users. A scammy or spammy appearance will deter people from looking further into your website, which indicates you need to do some serious revamping.

6. Your Call-to-Actions Are Weak

Do you have a cart or contact page for people to visit and check out their items or get in touch with you? CTAs are what can convert a user into a customer. If there is no “buy now” or “call us” anywhere convenient on the website, don’t expect customers to do the digging on their own.

7. Your analytics have dropped...

Any website owner will tell you that your site analytics are the most important indicator of success, and they are right! When was the last time you logged into Google Analytics to check your conversion scores? If you've noticed that your conversion rates are dropping, or perhaps your user retention isn't as good as this time last year, then maybe a design audit might be required.

When Marcia Morgan approached our team, her site was being held back by an outdated CMS that impacted not only the style of her site, but also her SERP results. The finished design our team delivered not only created a luxurious new style in keeping with her own interior design style, but also increased her SERP results putting her site on page 1 for her keywords (compared to 38 before).

Conclusion

Websites add a sense of legitimacy to a company. Staying up-to-date, especially with platforms that shape your entire online identity, is essential in more ways than you know. Besides aesthetic purposes, your web design can affect your website’s loading speed and navigation—essentially, the user experience. Exceptional web design always thinks of the customers first. Ensure that they understand your brand at a glance and that your website is easy for them to use.

Web design is not a skill that you can learn overnight. With that much work, you need to put your website in the hands of an expert. Our studio team have multiple years experience creating sites from scratch, as well as redesigning existing sites. When it comes to creative direction, we always put your brand first and work with what will fit the most. Contact us now to get started on your website revamp.

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