Designing and building a new website is a big investment. But it’s also very important for your business. It’s not only a digital business card, it might convert potential customers into actual ones, if done well.
So you had your site built a couple of years ago. Is it already outdated? Do you need a new one?
Ask yourself these questions:
If your site doesn’t work well on phones, tablets or in certain browsers...
Today 80% of the visitors use their smartphones to access the web and responsive design has never been so important. Google even favors mobile responsiveness in its ranking.
If you need Flash to see your site properly...
Yes, the Flash animations used to be cool and hip. But today, so much can be achieved with Html5 and Css3. And let’s not forget that Flash requires the installation of a plugin (which not all users know exactly how to download) and it does not work on iphones or ipads. It's also not easily indexed by Google, so you should really get rid of it.
If Google doesn’t find you...
You might have a great site, but if people can’t find you, it’s not really worth it, is it?
SEO - Search Engine Optimisation, helps you get traffic from search results. If your important content is hidden in images or Flash elements, or simply your content is not written with SEO in mind, it’s likely your users won’t find you.
If your visitors don’t take action...
You should guide your visitors on your site. Help them through the important content and make it easy for them to take action. Whether it is to get in touch with you, follow you on Social Media or interact on your blog posts - you need to help them. And this is done through effective growth driven design.
If it takes a long time to load...
People don’t have much time today. And they certainly will not wait 10 seconds for your site to load. They will probably have closed it by the time all your heavy graphics loaded, or moved on to something else. Page speed is extremely important and your site should be optimised for that.
If it doesn’t reflect your organisation anymore...
Times are changing, and probably your organisation has too. Why should your website be any different? It should not be static and evolve hand in hand with your company. New branding, logo, values, etc should be reflected on the site.
If you can’t update it easily or need to ask the developer to do all the content updates for you...
Back in the day websites were more static, and content was not that dynamic. But today it is crucial you keep your website up to date, with the latest info, contact details and news about your company. Content Management Systems help you with all this. Once your site is set up, you should be able to do these updates easily yourself.
If some of these or all apply, then you might consider a new site.
