When was the last time you updated your website? Before you answer, this isn’t intended to be a trick question, speaking as a Cheshire web agency who deals with updating websites on a daily basis, we completely understand business owners want to concentrate on their core business, which sometimes leaves your business website looking neglected.

However, while you are busy with day-to-day business activity, have you ever considered that the majority of potential customers will form their first impressions of your business when they land on your website, so to answer the previous question, it is important to update your website on a regular basis.

As a Cheshire web design agency, we inherit websites which have sadly become neglected, so join us as we highlight 7 ways to decided when it’s time for a website redesign.

Not Getting Results

It doesn’t really matter if you have a shiny, pixel perfect website with the latest functionality, or a website still celebrating the last millennium. Regardless of your industry, clientele or budget, if your business website isn’t getting the results you want; it’s simply not fit for its intended purpose.

I’d HIGHLY recommend accessing your Google Analytics account and closely monitoring the average visit duration, average page-per-sessions and bounce rate data on a monthly or regular basis. If the figures consistently show lower numbers than previous data, it sadly means visitors are not only reading less content, they are spending less time on your website. If the data proves my point, it’s time to start thinking about a website redesign to help address declining traffic.

Not Mobile Responsive

Statistics prove mobile searches are now accountable for over 51% of internet usage on daily basis, a statement Google officially confirmed when they announced more searches were now made on a mobile device compared to a laptop or desktop computer in 2015.

Mobile users want a great user experience to match the desktop version of your website. Putting yourself in your customer’s shoes, can you honestly navigate around your website and find what you need within a few single clicks? If you answered NO, it’s highly likely you have lost leads or potential customers without evening knowing it as mobile users are highly likely to abandon your website if they cannot find the information they need within a limited time window.

Again, Google Analytics offer such powerful insights into your website; you can even monitor what type of device your traffic is coming from. Analytics, along with trying out Google’s free mobile friendly test should be more than enough to offer food for thought on a mobile-friendly website redesign.

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) Strategy

Overtime, it’s only natural that your business goals and marketing strategies will evolve and you will obviously want these changes to match your business website. Although there are many different avenues of website traffic, organic traffic is accountable for over half of overall traffic with the rest made up from paid and social media to name just a few.

If you haven’t previously focused on putting together or maintaining an SEO strategy, a website redesign could be the perfect opportunity to build your website with SEO in mind based around your preferred keywords. Since 75% of organic traffic occurs from clicking on search results on the first page, putting together an SEO plan could prove to be very beneficial in improving rankings and generating more visitors.

As a Cheshire web agency, we can review your website and put an SEO strategy in place based around your desired keywords.

Page Loading Speed

The average user is far less likely to care about the bells and whistles on your website or how the website looks, than how fast it is. 

With such a short attention span, 47% of consumers expect a web page to load within 2 seconds with a further 79% of that traffic likely to never return to your website due to poor loading speed. Not only are you likely to lose traffic through poor loading speed, Google have also confirmed that page loading speed will have a factor on organic search results meaning you could lose out on traffic in a number of ways.

As part of our service, we offer all our clients a free WPG Report service which will test the speed of your website. If you are thinking of a redesign, our Cheshire web agency will have page loading speed in mind.

Lack of clear call-to-action

It doesn’t really matter if you want visitors to sign-up to your newsletter, purchase a product or to contact you directly, ask yourself one simple question “Does your website clearly set out and guide visitors to do what you want them to do on your home or landing pages?”.

Be open and honest with visitors and engage with them by asking if they can clearly and easily navigate to your intended call to action by directly asking them or by monitoring visitor’s behaviour by what pages they browse and how long they stay on each page. If you’re website doesn’t clearly guide users to your call-to-action, a re-design may be in order.

Out of Date Content

There’s nothing worse than stumbling upon a website and finding their promotional offer expired or the product you were after is out of stock once you hit the checkout. We have all been there, but finding out of date content on your website could mean gaining access from your local web developer to make the changes, or looking for a complete overhaul in a website redesign.

Look to check for any inaccurate information such as expired promotion offers or case-studies or partner brands who may feed through to the homepage you are no longer associated with or exist anymore. Review any of the photography used and look to replace them on a semi-regular basis to keep returning visitors engaged.

Third Party Broken Functionality

For some business websites, installing third party functionality such as a really cool gallery or perhaps a shopping cart system can improve website functionality and can also save on costs if you insist on installing any freebies you come across…

However with third party functionality really out of your control, it can become very easy for it to break, require new or paid updates, risk virus attacks or could even slow your website speed down. Any of these reasons listed could warrant a total website redesign.