Home Articles Web design & development 6 signs you need a new website
Technology moves quickly – a lot can change in a few years. Regular maintenance of your website is essential to keep it secure and up-to-date. But even then, businesses should be looking to redesign their website every 3-5 years, to make sure the technology it is built on is still supported and the website continues to deliver what the business needs.
Here are 6 signs that your website needs a redesign.
1. Is your website mobile-friendly?
With the abundance of mobile and tablet devices now available on the market, the majority of visitors to your website may well be using a tablet or mobile device to access it. If your website is not mobile-friendly – automatically adapting to fit the size of the device being used – then it is likely the poor user experience will result in visitors leaving your website.
Not only have you lost a potential customer, but Google also looks unfavourably on websites that are not mobile-friendly – negatively affecting your position in search rankings.
2. Is your website design outdated?
As with everything, website design evolves. What was considered modern a few years ago, will now be seen as outdated. Website users have a huge amount of choice available at their fingertips – in this competitive environment – you have to stand out for the right reasons. Your website could be the first impression a potential customer has of your business – you want to make it count.
3. Is your website too slow?
Overtime websites can become cluttered with information if they are not properly maintained. Page redirects, videos, long articles with lots of images all add to slowing down your website. There are many reasons why your website may be slow, including issues with the coding. A web redesign could fix many of these.
Does your website still meet your needs?
Originally, the purpose of your website may have just been to tell people who you are, what you do and how they can get in touch. Fast forward a few years, this may have changed. It may be that you now need the ability to sell products online, to add new functionality to enhance your user’s experience or improve efficiency by integrating your website with your customer database. You may get by for a while adding these elements retrospectively, but to provide customers with the best possible experience, you may need to consider getting a new website designed.
Is your website difficult to update and manage?
To keep your website engaging, you need to keep content fresh and up-to-date. To do this quickly and easily, you need a good, well supported, secure content management system (CMS). Is your CMS simple to use? Can you update and add content quickly and easily? Is your CMS secure? If the answer is no to any of these, it may be worth looking to consider getting a new CMS. We recommend WordPress, a popular CMS that is easy to use and well supported.
Is your content management system out of date?
An outdated CMS makes managing and updating your website far more difficult and time-consuming than it needs to be. If it is a bespoke CMS, which is no longer supported or it is out of date, it may not work well with other systems, and it could be time to change to a new one.
Developers work on upgrades which you can use for your existing system, but new versions will be launched and, at some point, your CMS will reach the end of its life and no longer be supported. This means you won’t have any of the new features but, more importantly, you won’t have any new bug fixes or security updates. Any breaches to your site’s security could have huge implications not just for your website, but also the business.
Without upgrades and backups from the developers, eventually, the system will break as the web moves on leaving your site woefully behind. It’s time to change before this happens.
