7 Hints Your Site May Need an Update

Your website is your online home base. How’s it holding up? Is it time for a redo or a refresh? Here are seven hints that you may need a new website.

1. You can’t perform site updates

If you can’t update your site regularly and easily it is time for a new site! You can’t market effectively with stale content. You just can’t.

2. Your web pages load slowly

Every one-second delay in page load time reduces usability. People are impatient! They will leave before they ever see a word of your content. Search engines know this and actually down-rank slow sites. Speed matters.

3. Your design is outdated

Does your website design reflect your current brand? Color, typography, logos, and images communicate a brand’s values and leave a lasting impression on visitors. Does the design reflect modern aesthetics? Your site design visually communicates the “freshness” of your brand.

4. Your site looks bad on mobile

Everyone uses their phones to do everything. If your site doesn’t work well on small screens, your business will suffer. Again, search engines down-rank sites that don’t render properly on mobile devices.

5. You don’t rank well on search engines

If you aren’t ranking for important search phrases, it is time to update your site. The cause can be stale content or stale development. Whatever the cause, you need to fix it. If you aren’t visible on search, you aren’t marketing to anyone online.

6. You are missing important functionality

“Important” varies by industry, but if your site does not have the tools your clients expect, it needs an update. This could be an appointment tool or a chat feature. It could be the ability to make purchases or reservations online. If you don’t have what your customer expects, you are losing business.

7. Cluttered navigation

We are all done with too much navigation. We expect few choices and streamlined surfing. Users today expect to scroll, not click. If you still have multiple menus and lots of drop down choices, you need to streamline.

Time to refresh.

These items may indicate a need to refresh your existing site or develop a completely new site. Your budget may also impact how much you can do at once or whether incremental changes are best.

What you can’t do is ignore your site. Make a plan to make the changes you need. Likely, the effort will pay for itself.