How do you know you need help with your web design? Does it need a few changes? Does it need a rework? Sometimes it is better to sit and evaluate your website because it is the digital front of your business
After this evaluation, you must decide what is killing your progress and go to the web design experts.
They can tell you what’s the next action to take to save your website or improve it. The following 5 items are the most common reasons to change your web design.
1. Poor UX
Whenever you visit your website, it’s ok for you. However, does everyone completely understand every part of it? If people do not understand what they see they’ll leave your website. The percentage of people leaving is also known as the bounce rate.
The higher the bounce rate is, the more obvious it is that your website needs a rework. Most online projects and e-commerces fail due to poor UX. UX stands for “User Experience”, and long story short it means how well a visitor moves through your website.
Mobility in your website is a matter of how well-structured it is. No duplicate pages, no delays in load, and no broken sites. Nevertheless, covering these three aspects is just half of the job. The other half depends on the design itself.
Having a font, color, or logo you like might not always be the best looking. There’s a complete science behind colors and shapes applied to marketing dedicated to “sell more”. That is the first reason you must look for professional help in this matter.
It makes sense. Think for a second that you get into a store and you see dirt upon the merchandise. On top of that, you can see wires all over the ceiling and ripped wallpapers.
Not to mention the smell of a clogged toilet since you get in. You will surely leave ASAP.
The previous example is obviously exaggerated. However, it shows a point: always keep your business neat and good-looking. In the digital world, you will not have bad smells or dust. But you must attend to other aspects.
So always keep an eye on the loading pages and the overall look. It is important for everyone to experience your website the best possible way. And that leads to another issue.
2. It’s Not Responsive
Responsive design is a smart way to show your website. It remarkably enhances UX and makes more visits out of the audience. A responsive design uses code to keep some aspects of your website regardless of what people use to browse it.
Responsive design allows easy navigation from any device; it doesn’t matter if it is a tablet or a smartphone. All elements in the website will adapt to the screen size of your navigation device. If your website does not work well on mobile devices, it needs a total rework.
Think of this issue as a demand from the business to not let you out of it. Having a responsive design on your website equals being more mobile-friendly. Being mobile-friendly translates in more ways to get visited and therefore more money in return.
Having a responsively designed website is not just a matter of the visitor’s browsing device. Operative systems must be also considered. Android, iOS, or any other operative system shouldn’t have problems loading your website.
Similar consideration should take place about the software people use for visiting your website. All of your web pages must be easy to interact with Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, or another browser like Safari.
If your web does not have a responsive design it might look abandoned or outdated. By the way, issue number three is more in-depth about the inconvenience of an outdated website.
3. It Is Not Updated
Technologies move forward and your website should do the same. If you have an old technology mixed with a new one, soon you will experience technical problems. The two most common problems are the missing tools and the delation in loading.
About the missing tools, you can consider tools in every part that allows people to connect and use your website. It could be an animation designed for previous versions of the website. For example, an old version of the flash player is not compatible with most browsers.
Most WordPress websites run automatic updates and this can be a problem sometimes. If a widget updates and the theme is not compatible with this version, the widget will look weird at best. The worst that can happen is losing money on e-commerce malfunction.
On the other hand, when a new widget makes your website faster, you should move to the new widget. Otherwise, there will be a difference in the supported version that will slow down your website.
What can you do about it? Make sure your webmaster or the staff in charge of your website has everything updated. It will speed up your website and will prevent it from malfunctioning. Remember that fast and neat websites save companies.
4. Has No Marketing Direction
The ultimate purpose of any commercial website is to ensure high revenues. Your website can be functional and perform at its best but, is it directed towards a goal? If the answer is no, it’s time to think about a marketing rebuild.
Depending on your business and your product marketing goals may vary. Having more conversions, more leads, more visitors, or more revenue are the most common goals. However, not using your website for a clear goal is a waste of resources.
All the invested time and hours building your website may go to the trash if you don’t focus your efforts.
Do you want more visits? improve your landing page. How about more sales? create better information about your products. There are good strategies to apply on your web.
You and your digital marketing team pinpoint what are the best goals and how to achieve them. After that, you should ask your web designers and developers to do all necessary changes to your website.
That way you can be sure that your website serves a purpose.
As an additional recommendation, measuring is key to getting marketing accuracy. In that sense, analytic data and other measuring tools will allow you to be in touch with reality. If you don’t measure your ongoing progress, changes will take place late.
5. It Doesn’t Represent Your Company Anymore
This case is still happening. Let us say that you have a beautiful website and it has been the same for about 8 years. However, your business changed and your products are different from back then.
Do you think visitors will know about your current business from an old website?
This is very common in companies that use their website as a presentation card. They tend to pay the domain and hosting costs. However, they don’t pay attention to making matches for the content and the updated information of who they are now.
If this is your case, the good news is that this update won’t take long once you gather the information. A few color renewals, font selections, refresh all products, and add social media buttons. Your web designer should give you more specific guidelines for that.
Now, let’s say that your company is an international service provider, but it started as a modest local business. If your website is not multilingual you are losing an important part of your audience. Adapting your website to other languages is the right thing to do.
Redesigning your website is a decision based on strong criteria and depends on the changes in the company. Always make sure your website matches the information of your company. More detailed, clear, and updated information translates into more trust from your audience.
Where To Focus for Your Website’s Upgrade?
Sometimes, you do not know where to start changing parts on your website. It may take a while and lots of effort depending on the size and depth of the information to show. However, there are 5 points you can focus on when renewing your website.
1. Its Content
The soul of a solid website is the content. The way you show the information is important, but more important is the information itself. Depending on how you tell a story you can get close to your audience or push them away.
Some websites of service provider companies should consider adding content of quality about their specific topic. A blog would definitely enrich the web’s content providing new information for new audiences. A blog works in more than one way.
The most important advantage of focusing efforts on the web’s content is SEO. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the most effective way to earn notoriety on the internet in an organic way. This method will increase your visits.
Regardless of SEO is more than just content, it relies on content to appear first on SERP. A fine work of keyword research added to alluring content is the right way to do it. However, it sounds easier than it is so let the professional people do the job for you.
Nevertheless, direct the content to a specific target and always with huge value for the reader. If the reader doesn’t find what he reads, he will leave your website despite your positioning in SERP.
2. Its Usability
When a website is confusing and almost encrypted, it is hard to stay in for the information you’re looking for. Therefore all websites must ensure an easy pathway and simple navigation on every site.
The visitor should know where he or she is at every second. Also, it will help having all organized on titles, bullet points, and help users by using bold or italic font. Links to other sites or websites should be visible and work.
An important part of the usability you should focus on is the links. Internal links should point to the right site and all of them must be active. Imagine for a second finding a door with the sign of “restroom”, you open it, and behind it is a wall. That is the feeling when a site is down.
Wrong links direct visitors to the wrong site. If the link or button says “Home” it should take you to the home page. Using the example of the restroom, imagine that instead of a wall, after opening the door you find the kitchen.
If you are managing or designing your website, these errors can happen. However, if you hire professional help for web design you won’t have to worry about it.
3. Its Look
Investing in how your website looks will grant visitors attention. As visitors, your first impression is not on content, it is on the web design itself. That means that having a beautiful website counts. Neat, clean, ordered, and with representative colors.
Not presenting the right esthetics could also give a bad impression. There is an entire science devoted to finding the right colors and the right layout. The design should serve as a non-verbal speech to resume what this website is all about.
Tell your web designer to avoid visually crowded layouts. This is something important because if there are too many shapes and colors the reader’s attention will fade. It is recommended a simple layout with enough symbols and information to support your content.
Focus your budget on the website’s look as well as the content and the functionality.
4. Its Notoriety
You focused so far on aesthetics and content issues. However, all efforts vanish if your website does not reach people. So notoriety is very important because it will draw attention to your website around the internet.
Social media, SEO, and all types of digital marketing tools and techniques enhance your notoriety. Digital marketing goals and strategies are key to spreading the word around the digital world.
Focusing just on SEO will attend only one of the many ways people can reach your website. Depending on the marketing goals, it may be convenient to pay for ads or use email marketing. Whatever it counts to enhance your visibility is worth the evaluation.
5. How’s the Interaction with Your Audience
Information, when properly focused, can impact every visitor greatly. If your information is solid and empathetic, your impact will be deep and will remain. On the other hand, if your information goes viral, it will spread quickly but will not last longer than a couple of days.
If your website’s previous iteration didn’t make the right impact, use your “new website” to achieve it. When you want to in one way or the other to your audience you should change the content’s intention.
As a recommendation, never forget to finish your content on every available platform with a call-to-action. Another recommendation is to use all the analytics tools to read your public. You will save a lot of money on errors when you know what people want.
As a final hint of where to focus your efforts, remember that your website must help solve problems. So when people browse your website, consider that they are looking for an answer. If they find it, they will talk about your website. Else, they will forget it.
Is SEO That Important?
The short answer is “yes, it is”. You should Everyone needs to experience using all SEO methods available if you want to give your website authority above others. It is the perfect tool to earn both credibility and trust.
As you know, it is not the same to accept information from a non-profit website as a sponsored one. It feels different and more selfless when you find information for free, even if you later suggest buying something.
The key element of a successful organic result is SEO. When you think about it, preparing a good SEO strategy becomes a process of adapting for your audience. After all, while you are changing your content, don’t you want your audience to love it?
Experts might say that most search engines have the duty to show the fittest website under a certain keyword. They are right. Preparing your website for SEO is like flattering the search algorithm so search engines show you the web on top.
Additionally, when you select SEO for local purposes there are more chances for you to be on top. Google search algorithm gives more importance to local searches because they are more googled. Especially when you own a local business, SEO is essential.
Investing in SEO is the smartest decision when you want your website to cause a great impact on people. The depth and range of techniques are way better than a paid advertisement in the long term.
In Summary
The main responsible for your website’s underperformance must be attended to ASAP. Making a quick first diagnosis of your website is so simple that anyone can do it. Just browse a few minutes in it and see what feels odd.
However, a deep and meticulous evaluation will prevent any future failures.
After changing your website’s weak spots, never forget these three pieces of advice:
- Invest on SEO
- Constantly check users behavior through analytics
- Always use professional help
