6 Signs Your Website Needs to Be Redesigned

If you’ve noticed that your website hasn’t been that effective recently and started to generate fewer orders, one of the reasons behind this could be the fact that it’s become old and needs to be redesigned and updated.

In this article, you’ll learn how to do that.

There’s a huge difference between “old” and “vintage”. Vintage things are generally of high value and that value only increases with time. Being old, however, usually means “obsolete”, “out of date” and “style”. Unfortunately, websites don’t become vintage - but they do get old.

Whether you like it or not, websites have to undergo redesign from time to time - mostly to incorporate the newest features and possibilities offered by the ever-evolving technology. One other thing is visual trends - people are keen to catch up on the latest trends and would certainly give more respect to websites that offer something that’s currently trendy and hot.

Finally, websites tend to get messy with times - adding new sections and introducing minor changes (both backend and frontend) certainly contributes to the overall chaotic and unpleasant experience users might have with your website.

So, it makes perfect sense to do a revision once in a while and get rid of the old stuff + reorganize the current website architecture and layout in order to increase the usability. After all, it’s all about the users, right?

Here are 6 signs showing you that your website is in dire need of a redesign.

 NOT MOBILE-FRIENDLY

“We Are Social” agency and “Hootsuite” SMM-platform have compiled a report called Global Digital 2019 containing interesting facts on how exactly we use the Internet. According to the report, the majority of Internet traffic is now mobile. Get this: as of now, we have 5.11 billion unique Internet users browsing the web via their mobile devices. That’s 2 percent more than in 2018.

Smartphones have become an integral part of our life and there’s no way you could go on without optimizing your website for these devices and their owners. No matter how interesting, useful, or unique your website may be - if it’s not mobile-friendly, people won’t give you a second chance and will quickly defect to your competitors.

Even Google pushes webmasters to optimize websites for mobile devices with its Mobile-First Index.

Every day you’re not optimizing your website, you’re losing tons of potential clients - in order to go mobile-friendly, you need to find a reliable web studio to help you out with this task.

Learn more about the mobile-first index and website optimization in this article.

LACK OF SIMPLE, STRAIGHTFORWARD LAYOUT

Companies grow and evolve with time - often, changing their structure, product lineup, and/or business model. All this has to find its way onto the website as well.

More often than not, these changes are introduced sporadically, in a chaotic fashion, which is never good and leads to a messed-up website. Users start to get lost in numerous submenus and sections, items are displayed in no particular order and often in the wrong category.

If you feel like your website might have come close to the state described above, do a simple test - ask a friend who’s never been to the website to visit it, find some item and add it to the checkout. THEN you will get first-hand feedback on how intuitive your website really is.

Decluttering your website structure and making it easier for users to navigate is a natural thing to do. It may not be that easy but in the end, it will be 100% worth it. Bounce rate will decrease, and the conversion rate will surely grow. Oh, and don’t get carried away with adding various nifty visual effects and cool menu transitions just for the sake of such. Your website’s primary goal is to provide its visitors with an intuitive, easy-to-navigate interface and straightforward layout.

PAGE LOAD SPEED AND FLASH-BASED CONTENT

If 10-15 years ago a lot of Internet users were quite used to waiting for their web pages to load, now they won’t take it. Even a few extra seconds may scare them away, which brings us to the next point: page load speed.

Increasing page load speed is not a matter of competitive advantage - it’s a must for any respectable website.

There are several ways of doing this, one of which is using a special tool developed by Google called Google Pagespeed Insights. Head over to their page, paste your website link and get some ideas and recommendations on what needs to be improved:

If the web page is in the green zone, then you’re OK
If the web page is in the orange or red zone, you’ve got to make some improvements

Another remnant of the past is Flash-based content. Adobe team have long discontinued its support so if you still have videos or other Flash-based elements, it’s best to replace them with HTML5 technology.

"OVEROPTIMIZATION" OF THE WEBSITE

In general, “overoptimization” means the process of adding too much content to your website, often in a disorganized fashion. A few years ago, search engines weren’t really considering this an important ranking factor but now the situation has changed.

What should you do if this is the case with your website? First, you should find out the weak, overoptimized spots:

1. In the title. You don’t have to repeat your keyword or phrase multiple times - one keyword per title should suffice (tip: use your main keyword).
2. In meta-tags. A lot of webmasters and site owners are making this mistake - they’re trying to cram all the main keywords in the meta-tag description, which is never a good thing. Search engines have learned to spot this and identify as a violation.
3. In the heading. A rule of thumb is no more than one keyword per heading. If you feel like you could be missing out on all those other keywords, you can use them in sub-headings.
4. In the URLs. There’s absolutely no need to turn your website’s URL into a mess by stuffing various keywords in it. Again, this “technique” is easily spotted by Google with their EMD algorithm. You risk getting your website downranked, which is a disaster you’d better not experience.

5. In the footer. Footers are there to provide the website visitors with the basic information about the company, contact details, etc. A few links to other sections of the website might also help but don’t overdo it - too many links is always a red rag for Google’s search engine.

6. In the links. A good (or, rather, not so good) example is when you provide too many internal links on every page of your website. Having 100 links on a page just for the sake of such may quickly lead your website to a penalty from Google.

In fact, the best thing to do is keeping your internal links to a minimum or, better yet, call a professional SEO specialist to handle the problem.

OUTDATED WEBSITE DESIGN

Arguably, one of the most important things on the list. People are emotional creatures and they are more likely to react to something that looks beautiful, original, and visually appealing. Visual design trends keep changing all the time. Ten years ago it was various frames, fancy textures a-la marble or wood, as well as pretentious fonts. Now, it’s all about minimalism and practicality, plain colors, and focus on the content.

Redesigning a website’s look is always a challenge but a challenge worth taking. Be sure to have your website correspond with the overall corporate style - in terms of color palette, fonts, and logos. It’s the only way to make it recognizable elsewhere on the Internet.

LIMITED FUNCTIONALITY AND LACK OF NEW TECHNOLOGIES

Every year we see new technologies and tools becoming available to developers and common users. Some of them are purely technical, others are really practical.

Examples include chatbots, AI, mobile search, video marketing & messengers, social media, native advertising, voice search and more.

Not utilizing these technologies and tricks is almost a crime - the best way for you to go around it would be visiting the websites of your competitors, checking out what they already have and how they are using it, and then, trying to implement the same for your own website.

However, there’s an easier way - we’ve already compiled the top marketing trends 2019 in a nice little article. Be sure to read it.

Needless to say, that’s not all the signs of an outdated website but these ones are definitely worth paying attention to and dealing with.

In a nutshell, websites of today are functionality, simplicity, and straightforwardness. Somehow you should throw a clean yet appealing visual design into the equation, and you’ll get it right.

If you’re not sure how to get this done properly, turn to professionals with vast experience and the right tools for the job. Contact us now to get an estimate or see the examples of our work in the portfolio.

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