When is The Right Time to Redesign your Website?

Last updated on September 21st, 2023 at 02:11 pm

Every website on the internet gets outdated at some point in time. The challenge here is to identify when your website is outdated or becoming outdated as early as possible as most website owners don’t even know their website is outdated until it starts to harm business performance.

First of all, let’s look at some of the ways an outdated website can harm your business.

• Having an outdated website affects your business brand as your website is an online representation of your business and if you don’t take care of it, your overall business brand will be negatively affected.

• Your competitors will get an upper hand online as their website is more fresh and updated than yours.

• Your online sales will take a big hit as users (target market) don’t like your website or don’t trust your website as it is not been updated and kept fresh for a long time.

• Also, it would become a huge waste of time, effort, and money if you just built a website to let it be outdated. The whole investment you made on your website will be completely wasted.

As you now know some of the ways an outdated website hurts your business performance, let’s dive right into how you can identify if your website is outdated or becoming outdated to quickly redesign your website and get your business on track as soon as possible.

1. Your search engine rankings drop.

Search engines such as Google rewards websites that are up-to-date and fresh with higher rankings. In the same way, they decrease rankings of websites that are outdated. Therefore, if your website is experiencing a decrease in search engine ranking, take a quick look at your competitors who have overtaken you in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). If their website is fresh and updated than yours, it’s a pretty clear sign that your website needs a redesign to get on the good side of search engines.

2. Visitors Leave your website quickly.

If you have a tool such as Google Analytics installed on your website (which you should if you are serious about your website performance) you can see the Bounce rate of your website. Bounce rate is the rate at which visitors quickly exit your website without even engaging with your website in the slightest possible way. This is a clear sign that indicates that your website doesn’t have what your target market is searching for or they don’t trust your website. Therefore, if you are experiencing high bounce rates (more than 65%) you should consider redesigning your business website. Just take a look at your competitors, see how their website is structured and designed, and take some inspiration from them on how you can redesign your website.

3. The Website Loads slowly.

Website loading time is becoming more and more important nowadays as people have a lack of patience for slow-loading websites. For example, imagine you visit a website to get some information on something and that website is loading for over 15 seconds. Will you stay on that website? The answer is probably no and you will visit another website. This will increase your bounce rate and will also cause your website to rank lower in search engines. Inspirenix Web Design Sri Lanka mentioned that website loading speed is one of the crucial elements of a well-performing website. Therefore, if your website is loading slowly, you should redesign your website and avoid these negative impacts on your business. A good website speed to aim for in your redesign process is under 5 seconds.

4. Your business industry is becoming more and more competitive.

If your business industry is getting more competitive by the day, it is a must that you have a website that is fresh and appealing to your target market to keep you ahead of the competition. As mentioned above a fresh and updated website has several benefits that help you establish your brand and increase business performance with online sales and leads which will help you survive in a competitive market.

5. Some elements on your website don’t function properly.

If you had your website for a while without updating it, there is a chance that some functions on your website such as contact forms may not function properly. This is a common issue on WordPress websites as the plugins are outdated. If this is the case on your website, you must redesign your website while updating those plugins to make the website function properly without any errors.

6. Your business has gone through a rebranding process.

If your business has recently gone through a rebranding process, your website has to be redesigned to represent the new brand image as well. If the website is not redesigned, people will have difficulties engaging with your business as they may think that your business and your business website are two different businesses. This will affect your new rebranding campaign as well. Therefore, if you rebrand your business, it is a must that you redesign your website to represent your new brand.

Conclusion

Now that you know how an outdated website can hurt your business and how to identify if it is the right time for your website to be redesigned, we believe that you will invest in a website redesign to get your business on the right track and stay ahead of the competition.