What is a website redesign?

A website redesign is a complete overhaul of the code, and look of your website. You may decide to keep the concept, but the text content, layouts, and user experience is all totally new. Why does your site need a website redesign?

Websites can last forever BUT there are signs when you should start thinking about a website redesign. If your website loads slowly, is difficult to navigate, isn’t mobile friendly, and your competitors have new websites its time.  Your website is the most important asset to your business, when someone is searching online for a service you offer or a product your selling you need to found, and it needs to load fast, be mobile responsive, and have a modern clean feel.

Websites establish company credibility – meaning if you take your business seriously, you will want it to be informative, easy to navigate, engaging, and attractive.

Why does your site need a website redesign?

• Search Engine Rankings Are Low
• Low Revenue Conversion Rates
• High Visitor Bounce Rates
• Slow Website Load Times
• Your Business Has Grown
• Your Branding Has Changed
• Poor Mobile Experience
• It’s Been 2-3 Years Since You’ve Last Updated.
• User Experience Is Lacking

If you’re not sure if you need a website redesign, ask yourself these 8 questions. Make notes along the way of how you’re website is doing compared to your goals.

Why do I need my site to rank high on search engines?

At one time, the key to winning at SEO was to plug your content with as many keywords as possible. But thanks to Google’s ever changing algorithms, it’s all about original high quality valuable content. Google’s search engine algorithms are aimed at helping people find answers from trustworthy sites. If you want to see how your site is ranking, you should be using Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics to monitor search queries, click through rates, and your position in ranks. If you want your website to rank, you need to give value on this topic and make it easily accessible.

SEO is one of the best assets you can leverage to grow your brand online, but it’s a slow steady and painful process. First you need to build trust with Google, then you build a healthy authority profile, lastly focus on delivering dense well written content that engages your readers and solves a problem they have. Once you have the content, make sure your site is designed for users to easily access it.

Why do I have low visitor conversion rates?

A conversion rate is the term used to define how many website visitors take a defined action like subscribe to your newsletter, add to cart, or pay for your product or service. What’s a low conversion rate? That depends on your point of view and your industry. The only way to benchmark yourself is to compare yourself against others selling the same product or service. For example in a generic ecommerce industry the add to cart conversion rate is 8% in the United States.

Do a quick Google search for “(your industry service or product) CVR average” and compare to your stats available on your Google Analytics Dashboard. If you are falling short, it may be the visuals, the navigation, or the content on your pages. Are you considering your ideal customer profile and speaking to them directly? Are you creating content they care about or trying to accomplish a hard sale?

Why do I have high visitor bounce rates?

Your bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who come to your website and leave without viewing any other pages on your website. Google Analytics houses this data and will show your bounce rate month over month or year to date. Take into consideration the pages your customers are bouncing from, did they fill out a contact form, did they call your telephone number, or did you refer them somewhere else? If your visitors left on these avenues, your bounce rate might not be a bad thing. On the other hand, if your customers are leaving unplanned, you need to drill down your content, calls-to-action, and create more sticky content. Add links to to more pages on your website and think of where a visitor might want to go next.

On the other hand, if your customers are leaving unplanned, you need to drill down your content, calls-to-action, and create more sticky content. Add links to to more pages on your website and think of where a visitor might want to go next.

If it’s a blog, do you have additional content on a similar topic to recommend? If it’s a product page, do you have similar products that are frequently bought together? Lastly, not all visitors are ready to make a decision about your business, so offer them ways to stay connected with you whether it’s social media links or subscribing to your newsletter. Don’t lose your visitors permanently.

Why is my website experiencing slow load times?

Did you know that 47% of consumers expect a website to load in less than 2 seconds? Web page loading time is a major contributing factor to page bounce rates. If a potential lead hears about your company, visits your site, and waits…and waits…and waits… for your website to load, they already have a negative experience. They’re going to bounce and write your company off because of the traction they experienced before ever learning more about your company.

Your visitors care more about page load time than they do about all the bells and whistles on your site and it affects your SEO too. If you want to know how your website is stacking up, visit PINGDOM.COM. If you’re ranking is low on either desktop or mobile, you have lots of work ahead of you and should work with your website developers to reduce the friction for your visitors.

Has your business grown?

Take a look at your business last year, and the year before; it doesn’t look the exact same year to year. Your business has a unique story that’s always evolving and your website should communicate your growing story. Maybe there has been a shift in the market and you have picked up a new product or service line. Maybe there have been updates in your target market. Whatever the reason may be, business goals can change over the years and your website should reflect the goals of your business as it is today.

We’re all familiar with the saying “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, but this mentality can be hurting your business’s bottom line. If anything has changed in your business, a website redesign can highlight how your business looks today. Too often, companies see the launch of their website as an end point. It’s something that’s constantly in motion, growing, improving and developing.

Why should I re-brand my company?

Your logo is everywhere; from your website, t-shirts, water bottles, baseball hats to your business card. It is there to identify, not to explain. Your website is one of your most important business assets and your branding should be consistent. Your website is your digital business card and in many cases the first impression a potential customer will have of your brand when they visit your website.  If the look and feel of the site doesn’t line up with your current brand, then it is time to redesign your website. Consistency is key.

Has the technology on websites changed?

Pretty much everyone owns a smartphone these days – in fact, over 80% of internet users own and regularly use a smartphone. And what’s more, according to Google 61% of users are highly unlikely to return to a website that doesn’t work well on mobile, with 40% visiting a competitor’s website instead – all because the original website they intended to visit wasn’t mobile friendly.

Was your website built in Flash? This trend used to be very popular, but is now highly outdated and is unsupported on mobile devices and tablets. It’s also hurting your rankings for SEO, because search engines cannot read and crawl this content. If your website was built on flash or not designed with a mobile experience first, your website will not rank as high, and the user will take their business elsewhere.  MOBILE RESPONSIVE WEBSITES ARE KEY.

How do I know if my website user experience lacking?

Is your website producing the results you want? If your navigation is too long, you don’t have room for calls to action, or visitors have trouble finding the pages and content that’s relevant to them, chances are you’ve outgrown your current website. It’s crucial to put user experience (UX) and functionality as your top priority.

Use data to define what your customers find interesting about your site, where do they spend the most time, where do they drop off? Next, you need to work on gathering feedback. This includes insights from those within and outside your company. Those within will the company will give you a good idea of what is and isn’t working below the surface, while customers and focus groups can provide feedback regarding visual appearance and functionality.

In the end, you should redesign your website as much as you need to as often as you need to. But the only way to know whether you need to is to know your business inside and out. Have your business goals changed? Has your ideal customer profile changed? Having a website can be both a good visual reminder of how much time has gone by since you last examined your business and a way to track how successful your efforts have been.

You should feel completely proud of your site and have 100% confidence in it. If your site feels tired or unexciting to you, chances are your visitors probably agree. A fresh design can be just the change you need to stir up some excitement and liven up your website. For a redesign to be effective, it must stem from the understanding of what does and what doesn’t work on your current website, and how user needs have changed since the last redesign.

If your thinking of redesigning your website give us a call at 203.414.9692 or email us! to learn more.

Wieting Design | Website Redesign Connecticut (CT)