Update your website - 7 good reasons you should

Are you thinking it might be time to update your website? How will your visitors believe you have the modern, innovative product or service they need if your website looks outdated? If your website has unappealing design or content, the subconscious connection people will make is that your company is unprofessional. Users will be heading for the back button before they’ve even glanced at what you have to offer.

Unfortunately, technology waits for no man (or woman) and a website’s shelf life is estimated at between 2-3 years. Elements considered best practice in 2017/18, may already be old hat in 2020. Your website must responsively adapt to various screen sizes, include fresh content, and provide an engaging experience for the user. Hopefully, your website design isn’t lagging behind your competition. If so, its probably costing more than you realise, in terms of both credibility and more importantly – leads.

Our article below outlines 7 reasons why you need to update your website…

The look of your website can help make a visitor feel comfortable, and establish a sense of trust in your brand. Or equally, if it is unattractive, it can push your visitors right into the arms of your competition in just a click. As technology evolves, so does design. Furthermore, our taste for what is appealing and what is not naturally follows suit. Is your website designed for what is considered appealing today?

Compared to competitor’s websites, does your site design and layout look as modern as theirs?

If its not on the same level, or better, your visitors are probably thinking the same thing about your company. Time to update your website.

Do the photographs used on your website still represent your brand well?

Well thought out imagery is key to the appeal of the overall design of your site. If your photography is stretched, low resolution or just a bit kitsch, its a good sign that you’re due for a redesign. Cheesy, obviously-fake or stock photos that you’ve seen on countless other sites will only lower your credibility.

Is the content on your website easy to read and understand?

Has legibility been thought of? is the font and font size appropriate? is there sufficient contrast between the text and the background? You don’t want your site and its content to be a strain on the eyes of your visitors – they’ll just go elsewhere.

Are you making the most of the available screen real-estate?

Modern sites use the full width of the screen, whatever the device you’re using. Is your site working to old screen resolutions and confined to a boxed area in the middle – or worse yet – to the left of the screen? This is particularly noticeable when viewing your website on a desktop or laptop. If so, you know it is time to update your website.

Is your site too busy?

There are several things that were very fashionable years ago. Things like repeating backgrounds were all the rage, but these days are generally accepted to be a distraction to the visitor, and contribute to poor site legibility. There was also a trend of not having any white space and making sure the page was jam packed. Again if everything is tightly crammed into a small area it can be hard to read and people just won’t bother, they’ll end up going to someone else’s site that is easier to follow.

Do you use 3 or more different fonts?

2-3 well thought out and complimentary fonts can work together to enhance your site design and branding, any more and the content can start to become difficult to follow.

As the saying goes “Content is King!”. The content on your website needs to represent your brand, convey the value of what you offer to the user and enable them to quickly understand that you have the solution to their problem. The content should be benefit-oriented, streamlined and concise. Have another look at your website – are any of the below true? If so, now is the time to update your website.

The last blog or news article posted on your site was from over a year ago.

It is important to make the effort to regularly update your website with new and relevant content if you want to be seen as an expert source of knowledge by your audience. How will the latest technology in your industry affect what you can offer? Do you have experts within your business with useful insight on a particular subject? Sharing that knowledge and information will show your potential and existing customers that you are the experts and it will enhance their overall trust in your business.

Is your content confusing your audience? or is it just plain irrelevant?

Before publishing any content to your website, remember to always ask yourself – will this be of use to my visitors? and will my audience understand this content? For example, if your vets website listed out the technical specifications of their x-ray machine, would this be a useful information to you? Probably not, unless of course you are a radiology enthusiast.

Your dates are… outdated.

Companies often include date-related information on their website. Whether that might be an amount of experience in a particular industry or a list of awards. This information can quickly become inaccurate, providing the wrong impression if you are not updating your website regularly.

In April 2015, Google implemented a change to give preference to responsive websites in their search results. Be aware that having an older website can negatively affect your search engine rankings. We all know how annoying it is to have to pinch and zoom in to read content from a website on your phone. We all hate viewing a site on your phone and you can’t press the phone number and start a call. If this is your site, you run the risk of people just going elsewhere.

Pretty much everyone has a smartphones these days. It seems crazy to think that your website might not cater for users of mobile devices. Did you know that 2 out of every 3 minutes spent online is from a mobile device? Ensuring your site properly optimised for different screen sizes is simply a must.Your website should be able to adapt to any device without any compromise in quality and performance. The experience on mobile may need to be slightly different, the overall look and feel should be consistent with the desktop version.

As a 24-hour sales tool, it stands to reason that a website should be a primary lead generator for most businesses. If your website is failing to create leads, consider the following:

Lack of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)

SEO is the practice of optimising your website to rank higher and earn more relevant traffic from Search Engines. Years ago, the trend was for web designers/developers to cram 20-100 keywords onto a page. For a while, it worked. If you still have a site that does that, it is considered “keyword stuffing”. These days you’ll likely be penalised by Google for it.

Instead, tell Google exactly what it is that you want to be found for. Research which keywords your audience is searching for when looking for your products/services. Be sure to use these naturally within your page content. Get your designer/developer to add the appropriate meta titles and descriptions to each page on your site. Your chances of ranking well will soon begin to improve.

Call-To-Actions

Looking at your current site, do you provide users with a next step on every page of your website? Sounds obvious, but approximately 70% of small business websites do not have clear call-to-actions for anything on their homepages. Clarity breeds confidence and is a key factor in turning your web visitors into leads. Once your visitors are on your site, does the content guide them to an action – “Request a Consultation”, “Download our brochure”, “Contact Us”, etc. Remember that website visitors are always looking for that next step.

Functionality

Does your site feature interaction-rich functions that make sense, without the visitor having to think twice? Adding elements that are unfamiliar to your visitor can cause confusion and frustration.

Load Times

Does your website take ‘ages to load’? Today’s society wants everything. Now. Ensuring that your website immediately grabs the visitor’s attention has never been more important. If your website takes a long time to load the content, the delay will cause all but the most patient of visitors to leave.

• 47% of consumers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less.
• 40% of people abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load
• A 1 second delay in page response can result in a 7% reduction in conversions. Simply put, a quickly loading site can instantly instil confidence in consumers, and increase your online lead generation.

Flash Animations

Apple killed Flash… fact. There simply is no iOS safari setting for Adobe Flash since iOS never supported Flash. Adobe does not even make or support a mobile version of Flash any longer, for any mobile platform. Having elements of Flash on your website today is considered taboo and a big turn-off. If you want to view Flash content, you must first download the player (which can be a cause of frustration for visitors and there have also been widespread reports of fake flash players spreading malware). If you have flash in your site, it is definitely time to update your website. It actually hurts your website’s search engine rankings!

Small page layout

Have a look at your website on a modern desktop monitor. Does the overall layout seem small and its floating in the middle of the screen? If so, the site was designed to old standards for the much smaller desktop screens of yesteryear. Websites created within the last 5 years or so will generally have full screen layouts to fill the screen.

Image-Based Text

If most of the text in your site is embedded within an image, this is a big problem for your site’s search engine visibility.

Drop Shadows

This was a big trend a few years ago, but modern web design is flat, clean, and simple. If your site has shadows, gradients, or 3D glassy buttons, it might be time for a change.

Number of Visitors Ticker

A rarity these days but it is an obvious sign that your website is out of date. You don’t need a visitor tracker – Google Analytics does this for you!

Sound on load

We all hate it when you go to a site and a video/audio file immediately starts to play. Its perceived as rude, or an annoyance (especially for those looking at the web at work when they’re at work). The uninvited sound often has you clicking away from your site immediately. Always give your visitors the opportunity to press play or turn the volume on, rather than force it.

Overly long Slideshow

Having a slider doesn’t mean that your site is out of date. However, do remember that they contribute to your site’s loading speed. A slideshow with 3+ slides on it, using complex animations, it could be dragging your site speed down. It may also encourage people to head for the exit before they’ve found out what you offer. Consider using a hero image instead or pare back your slideshow so that it uses less resources to load.

Sidebars

Sidebars on your site, if done properly, can come in handy for guiding visitors to other related areas (particularly within e-Commerce sites). However, in a non e-Commerce setting, too much content in the sidebar becomes distracting. It dilutes your content away from your key messages and calls to action.

As the saying goes “Content is King!”. Your website content should convey the value of your offering and quickly show you have the solution to their problem. The content should be benefit-oriented, streamlined and concise. Have another look at your website – are any of the below true? If so, now is the time for an update.

The last blog or news article posted on your site was from over a year ago.

It is important to make the effort to regularly update your website with new and relevant content if you want to be seen as an expert source of knowledge by your audience. How will the latest technology in your industry affect what you can offer? Do you have experts within your business with useful insight on a particular subject? Sharing that knowledge will showcase your expertise and enhance overall trust in your business.

Your website showcases old products and services and is missing core products and services that you do now provide.

If you’ve made changes to what you do, it’s crucial your website reflects this immediately, as product and service pages are generally some of the most frequently visited pages on your website.

So you’ve got a shiny new website, lovely isn’t it? It took a lot of time and effort from you and your web developer, but it was totally worth it. The new website is modern, works on all devices, has loads of excellent content about your products or services,. The next question is how do you now get it out there to start working hard for your business? Did you know that there are 160 billion+ monthly Google searches. The aim now is to start getting some of that to your new site.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Congratulations, you’ve created a page or post that the Search Engine deems worthy of directing users to. The Search Engine can continue to send traffic to your site for months (or even years) after you publish it. 71.33% of searches result in a click on an organic result on the first page. Ever since the rollout of Hummingbird in 2013, Google has increasingly prioritised user intent over the exact keywords used. While keywords are still an important part of SEO, try not to get hung up as much on specific words and phrases.

Do your keyword research (or get an expert to do it for you) and let that guide your strategy. Remember to incorporate keywords naturally within the narrative. Write your content naturally, in a way that addresses the intent behind it. Do not repeat the same exact phrase throughout the text your page in an effort to rank.

PPC

If you’ve made changes to what you do, it’s crucial your website reflects this immediately, as product and service pages are generally some of the most frequently visited pages on your website.

Blogging

Before you update your website, remember to always ask yourself – will this information be of use to my visitors? Will my audience understand this content?

For example, if your vets website listed out the technical specifications of their x-ray machine, would this be a useful information to you? Probably not, unless of course you are a radiology enthusiast.

So, to summarise…

In all likelihood, there are probably lots more than 7 reasons why you need to update your website, but we hope its given you an insight. Our advice would be to take the time to properly consider your website and what its role is for your company. How important is the site to your business goals. The answer to that question will largely depend on the nature of your business. Are you product based? In which case it is likely an important part of your sales pipeline. Treat it accordingly, and make it as easy as possible for your customers to buy from you. Place the customer experience at the centre of your new website. It should be easy to buy and easy to make returns and the process should be stress free.

Using SEO or PPC effectively can bring more customers to you. Try to see it in terms of part of your cost per sale rather than an onerous extra expense. Using Pop ups to catch people leaving early or discount codes to incentivise sales should also be considered.

If you’re service based then your site is more likely to be more of an online portfolio of your work. Outline your credentials and showcase your expertise. Convince the user why they should use you for the particular service you offer, over your competitors. Information is key – remember to share knowledge via article and blog post writing. Also try to explain processes so that people are comfortable knowing what to expect should they hire you.

Ultimately, remember to place the customer at the centre of the process. Try to put yourself in their shoes and the whole process stems from there. What would they want to see or know? Then update your website to work accordingly.