Asking yourself “Do I need to update my website?” is a little like owning an old used car. At what point is that old thing costing you more than it’s worth? I’ve been driving the same Toyota Camry since 1997 (186,000 miles and counting!). I’ve been through that decision crisis many times. But I know websites and not Camrys ( Camries?). Here is a list of things to consider to help you decide when to do a website redesign.
Are My Company Goals the Same Today as When I Built This Site?
Is your website all about how you were founded and the cool building you are in? That might have been a fine way to introduce yourself in 1996, but today you have to help your customers within 4 seconds. If it takes longer than that for a person to figure out what your purpose is, they’ll hit the back button.
How Do I Get Visitors to My Website?
Is it search engine friendly? Your website can actually rank lower in search engines if it’s doing old school SEO with keywords loaded up on the bottom. New SEO best practices cater towards features that were overlooked in the past. Good alt-tags on your images, well-written and lengthy copy, website speed and mobile performance are all factors that affect your search ranking. Those are just a few simple things. Optimizing a modern site for SEO can make it perform even better.
Is My Website Converting Visitors into Customers?
If you don’t know the answer to this, the answer is probably no. Not tracking the performance of your website is like doing a direct mail campaign and making up the addresses at random. With a modern website, it is easy to track the number of users to your site, the pages they visit, and the search terms they were using when they found you. From there you can update pages to perform better and write blog posts to attract more customers. You can use analytics to see what keywords people use to find your site. You can also see which keywords people are using to find your competition instead.
Is There Something Broken on My Website?
This is really easy, but too many people overlook it. If there is something broken on your website, visitors will immediately see that and judge you. That’s like a broken window in the front of your shop or an odor at the doorway of your restaurant. Depending on what’s broken, it might be better to invest in a new website instead of fixing the broken part. If you have all of the other issues listed in this article AND you have something broken, it’s time to call the scrapyard. That’s where a shop like Lieberman Technologies comes in – we do website redesign according to best practices and modern standards.
A Year From Now You’ll Be Glad You Updated that Site
It can be hard to let that old site go, especially if you focus on the sunk costs of all that you put into it over the years. Looking ahead to your future customers, though, is what you need to do these days. It’s an age of low customer loyalty and trigger fingers on the back button. We walk clients through the move to new websites all the time. A website redesign can be just the boost your business needs. You can keep the search equity you have built up over the years. We can also optimize your new site to gain more search equity. Your new site will be easy to update, look great on mobile phones and desktops, and be something that you can be proud to mention to people as you network and promote your small business.