If there is one thing you should take away from our blog or any of our consultations, it is that your website is one of your hardest-working marketing tools. With everything moving online, everyone is searching for exactly what they need. Huge decisions are made in the blink of an eye, dependent on a five-minute Google search. Your website should be constantly evolving. You should refine every aspect of your website until it is running like a well-oiled marketing machine. With this being said, how often should you redesign or overhaul your website?
Why you should redesign your website
We perform routine maintenance on our clients’ existing websites. Every month, we log into the back end of our clients’ websites and update plugins, flush their cache, and make sure everything is running properly. We host a lot of client websites, but that doesn’t always mean that we were the ones who originally built them.
The unfortunate truth of the matter is that we tend to inherit websites that were built by other agencies. Some custom code WordPress themes from the ground up. Other times, our competitors will buy a theme from Theme Forest and fill in the business’s information and add custom photos, change a few colors, and send their clients off with a website like this.
What some business owners don’t understand is that when you buy a cookie-cutter theme from Theme Forest, the developers don’t always stay in business. They’ve custom-coded the theme, making it dependent on scripts that need to be updated. An important note here is that I am not knocking Theme Forest. There are some truly amazing web developers out there that are tremendously talented. However, you are rolling the dice as to whether or not you are getting a theme from a talented developer, or someone who mashed a bunch of code together.
Like many business owners, you go a few years without updating your website, and then one day you go to your site and it is broken. The issue is that a script needs to be updated. WordPress is constantly being updated for security, and they are constantly updating the platform with improvements. I can’t tell you how many times I have gone to Theme Forest for support, to find out the developer is no longer around, and the theme they created is no longer supported.
Real-Life Website Redesign Examples
A long-standing client of ours is a consultant who works with a specific industry who books appointments directly through their website. The site was built by another company years ago. Unfortunately, the site had 3 different page builders installed, and now, none of them were working. When you tried to edit a page, you saw nothing except a white screen.
Of course, we tried deactivating different plugins to see if there was a conflict. Unfortunately, nothing worked, and we could not update the website! It turns out the website was built 5-7 years ago, and they couldn’t remember the company that built it.
We went in and website redesigning services, with a rebrand and refresh of the look and feel. The new website is fresh, clean, and better reflects the quality of their work. The website also loads much faster, at 700 milliseconds.
The client is extremely happy with their new website and they are seeing great results. Additionally, they now have a website that is easily editable and will work great for years to come. It is built on a platform that is constantly being updated, and support is always available if we encounter any technical issues. That isn’t likely, because the platform is very stable, and is used by thousands of developers.
How often should you redesign your website?
We recommend that you redesign your website every 3-5 years. You should consult with your web designer and evaluate how the website is performing. There are a few things you should consider when evaluating your current website. See if your website meets any of the following website redesign requirements:
- Does everything work properly?
- Are we experiencing any recurring issues with our website?
- Has our business changed or evolved since we last updated it?
- Do we have any products or services that are not represented on our current website?
- Have we rebranded or overhauled our brand lately?
- Are we missing any features that would bring in new visitors or generate leads on our website?
- Are we struggling to generate leads for our business?
- Does our website have a direct strategy for funneling leads to our business?
If your website simply sits there, with little activity or visitors, it may be time to evaluate your existing site and your lead generation strategy. There are many different things you could be doing to generate interest in your business. You could have a regular blog or vlog that your audience regularly visits to stay updated on the latest industry information. You could capture their information and email them when a new post is available, along with offers for new products or services. You could have a PDF e-book that provides excellent information or guides them through a difficult process. They could opt-in to download that e-book, giving you their contact information. Then you could reach out to them to see if they need any assistance.
Your website is a tool
How you use it is up to you and how it best benefits your business. You have to try different things and see what works best for your business. You should be generating a contact list from your website, or you should receive regular phone calls from new prospects who need your help. A clear indicator that you need to evaluate your current website for a redesign or an update is if your website sits there with very little activity. You should have organic traffic from searches from Google, Yahoo, and Bing. You should also receive some traffic from social media and return visitors from emails you send out.
Redesign your website with new features
Adding features to your website to generate interest or help your target audience will increase your website traffic and your inbound leads. Let’s say you are a realtor who helps people list their homes. You could have a tool embedded on your website that calculates your home’s value. If they are interested in buying a new home, you could have a mortgage calculator that tells them what their overall payment would be, based on certain criteria.
These types of features are great and are there to capture their interest and their contact information so you can reach out to them and help them. Lead generation is a numbers game, and you never know who will end up on your website.
Is it time to redesign your website?
If you are struggling to generate traffic to your website, or you don’t receive inquiries through your contact form or phone calls, that is a clear indicator that it is time to re-evaluate your website. There are many things that could be keeping you from online success. It could be your copy, of the wording of the text on your website. It could be lacking in search engine optimization. Even worse, your contact form could be broken, or areas of your website could be broken, making visitors lose trust and confidence in you and your services, sending the wrong impression about your business. Your website could also have tremendous load times. Anything over 3 seconds and your visitors are likely to leave. Having optimized scripts and images, with proper caching will make your website load lightning fast.
You need a web design agency that knows what they are doing to help you with all of this. We can help you optimize your website, or rebuild it to look great, work great, and have a great inbound strategy for increasing your incoming opportunities.