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This is for sure the most obvious reason. Fashion doesn’t just happen in your wardrobe; the internet is constantly changing and if you don’t keep up with certain trends, customers are going to be put off the moment they arrive on your site.
While best practise from any design point of view is to keep your design timeless, there are still certain trends which need to be noted, and if your website was built a long time ago, the chances are it will be difficult, timely and expensive to tweak.
One of the biggest “NO NO!”’s in this industry is to have an unresponsive website! These days there are more daily mobile users online than on desktop, and Google has recently changed their algorithm so that mobile-friendly tests are run before desktop speed tests, making it even more difficult to reach a higher position organically.
Have you ever visited a site on your phone, only to see that you have to zoom right in, turn the phone around (even have to first turn autorotate on at that), and find it very difficult to navigate around the menu?
How much time are you going to spend doing that?
Not much. It’ll be straight back to that search engine results page to find a mobile-friendly site.
The ideal website will make any functions easy to use – browse, add to cart, share and so on.
If your website is not mobile friendly, Google will punish you for wasting their precious customer’s time (potentially also your future customer) and drop your Google listing down severely.
What was that client worth to you?
User experience does not just mean whether or not you are able to carry out the function you need to on your mobile phone.
Your user must be able to find, use, want, easily access and take away your content, product or feature as easily as possible.
Think like your user; they are not going to be the same as you and cannot read your mind to find your websites best features if they are hidden away.
UX is another factor that Google will take into account when calculating your SEO score.
Make sure you can easily change your website as needed, to reflect feedback from your users and customers.
If you have a website, I would imagine you have a well-designed brand to match your tone, ideal customer and strategy.
Does your website reflect this brand? Does your website contain your most up to date products/services?
It’s going to be hard to raise awareness of those new products if they aren’t actually on your website, and it’ll be just as hard if your website doesn’t reflect your brand (even if your new product does!)
This one goes in line with number 4 above, but have a think about it – how easy is it for you to actually update your own content?
Are you able to add new text, tutorials, videos of your product or service, how-to guides?
Have you thought about content marketing and if it’s right for your business to generate organic content?
If you already have that content, has it been SEO optimised?
Do you need to hire a designer every time you want to add content or make any small tweaks? Most modern websites have been built with a CRM system such as WordPress which makes it easy for you to do this yourself and will save you time and money.
Okay, this may seem obvious, but does your website actually work?
Has your website been fully tested? Have you tested from a UX point of view? You don’t necessarily need to hire a professional testing company, but it’s important that you ask your friends, family and/or a cross-section of your target audience to test and give honest feedback; how easy is your website to use?
If you haven’t done this, then you are going to lose potential customers.
How can you sell your product if the payment portal doesn’t work?
Is your website up to date with the latest practises in lead generation? Is it up to date with changes to Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager and Google Ads?
How do you collect leads? How do you track them?
How do you retarget to customers further down the sales funnel?
These practises are crucial for conversions; your customer needs to see your product or service approximately 7 times before they will convert.
Older websites often aren’t equipped with an SSL Certificate or haven’t been updated to be GDPR Compliant, with a Privacy Policy or Terms & Conditions.
This is, in fact, illegal now in some circumstances (especially in Europe) and can cost YOU, not the web designer, a whole lot of cash!
Don’t expect your average web designer to research these laws or create those documents for you…although we do include this for free in our web design packages 😉
Okay, so the 8 points weren’t quite as short as I had planned (!) but I hope this has helped you to evaluate your current website.
The main thing you need to think about is, how much will a website re-brand cost you compared to the business you will lose if all of the above aren’t in order?
Get the job done properly, get richer quicker that’s what we say!
