When a new website is designed for the first time, the needs are kept in mind and the website’s design is according to those needs. However, over time, the website’s design might get outdated. This may be due to the change in needs or the change in web design trends.
However, over time, the website performance may decline and the website content may become outdated. In this case, you’ll need to redesign your website. An outdated website is a bad first impression on potential customers. But how would you know that your website is due for a redesign? What are the signs your website needs redesigning services?
This article will answer why and when you need to redesign your website and your digital presence.
Website Redesign
Website redesign is the process of thoroughly analyzing the current website and its performance, checking if it is up to date with the current trends and is serving the needs of website visitors and the owner.
The outdated website is redesigned. This includes the codes, the structure, the overall design and technicalities, and everything. This is like making an entirely new website, a better one that fits the needs of the users and the site visitors.
For example, incorporating the best web design software tools from Tech Artisans can modernize outdated elements.
The Key Signs Your Website Needs a Redesign
Some key signs will help you understand if you need a complete website redesign. These signs are listed below:
- The website is difficult to understand
- The information regarding the business is inconsistent
- The website has a high bounce rate
- The website is outdated
- User retention is declining
- The website doesn’t work on mobile devices
- Using Content Management System Without Restraint
- Website Traffic Isn’t Responding Well
- Website is not SEO friendly
1. The Website is Difficult to Understand
If the website is difficult to understand, it means that the user will be confused, and confused users and visitors mean a high bounce rate and less lead generation. The website must be clear as day and the message on the website must be crystal clear, if it is not, the website may require a redesign.
Understanding and improving user experience is crucial, as outlined in Tech Artisans’ Guide to Future-Proofing Your Website.
2. Incosistant Information
Inconsistent information on a website is, again, confusing. Information regarding anything on your website must be consistent and clear, the call to action buttons must be clear, and the user must understand and know what they are doing when they are on your website.
If this is not happening, the website may be due for a redesign.
3. High Bounce Rate
Bounce rate is the number of people leaving your website not long after they have arrived. If a user has arrived on your website and leaves after a very short time, this means that his or her needs aren’t being fulfilled due to a reason.
Your website may require a redesign so that these needs can be fulfilled and the bounce rates start to decline.
To understand more about bounce rate and user engagement, consider reading about effective ways to measure your brand awareness.
4. Website is Outdated
An outdated website needs a redesign. If any aspect of a website or a website as a whole is outdated, it needs a redesign. The information, the design, the content management system, the codes, the programming, and the systems of a website, technical or non-technical, must always be fully updated. If the website is outdated, you need a redesign.
There are numerous ways to keep track of this aspect, the best one would be to analyze the technical data regularly and keep an eye on the market trends,
Redesign your website if it is outdated.
5. User Retention is Declining
User retention is the opposite of bounce rate but works the same way. Bounce rate is the number of people leaving your website quickly after they have arrived. User retention is the concept of keeping the users on the website for as long as necessary. Low bounce rate and high user retention go side by side.
If your user retention is declining, your website may need redesigning.
In addition to these signs, there are some problems discussed below that need to be solved for a website to be fully updated and to fully function. These are discussed below:
6. The Website Doesn’t Work Best on Mobile Devices
A website must have a mobile-friendly version in this smartphone-driven time. In this digital world, around 60% of website users and web page visitors are searching the internet on a mobile phone.
Search engines prefer user-friendly websites, and being user-friendly today also encompasses being mobile-friendly. Mobile-friendly websites rank higher in search engine rankings. A well-designed website must have multiple versions.
You may need a website redesign if your site is not friendly with a mobile device.
This is a significant issue, as discussed in No Mobile Website? You’re Probably Turning Customers Away.
7. Using a Content Management System Without Restraint
A content management system (CMS) is software that helps someone create and manage the content on a website without having to have specified technical knowledge of programming or without having to code at all.
This handles all the difficult technical parts of building a new website and lets the user focus on more pressing and direct issues like the design of the landing page.
Learn more about this balance in Tech Artisans’ article on the laws of psychology for good UX design.
By using a content management system, website redesign becomes an easy process. The owner may not have to hire programmers to redesign a new website rather he can just use these content management systems himself and design a new website.
But there is an inherent problem with using this software, while they are easy to use, create visually appealing high-quality content, and are user-friendly for people who don’t know how to code from scratch, sometimes they may not address compelling issues like the speed of the landing pages.
These complex problems sometimes may only be understood by people with expertise.
8. Website Traffic Isn’t Responding Well
You may know when you need a website redesign by observing your website traffic. If you observe the actions of the users and visitors of your site, the bounce rate, and the traffic from various devices you might understand what is going on.
There are various other factors and important aspects too. Is the site visible to the target audience? Are the pages loading quickly? Are the visitors staying on the site longer? Is the bounce rate high or low? Is the information up to date with the latest trends?
If you carefully collect all of this data, the analysis might tell you whether you need to redesign your entire website or you just need some minor changes. Website redesign is a long and complex task and must not be done without collecting all of the data.
An example of this would be to check the bounce rate, if it is too high, there might be a problem with the load speed of the landing page or some valuable information might be missing from the page.
9. Search Engine Optimization and Digital Marketing (Website is not SEO friendly):
Search engine optimization is an important aspect of any website and can’t be left out while discussing website redesign.
Outdated websites are not preferred by search engines in their search results. To ensure your success online, you need an updated website.
This is why companies invest heavily in Digital Marketing and Social Media Marketing these days. To stay up to date with the industry trends, reach their target audiences, make their site SEO friendly, and increase their conversion rate.
Google Analytics and Google Search Console are two of the most used and effective tools for digital marketing and optimizing a website.
Google never ranks an outdated website on the top, it analyzes the website from top to bottom and from inside out. If Google gets an idea that the site is not user-friendly, or the site is outdated or not mobile friendly for a mobile user, it goes down in the search result ranking.
Designing social media posts, running Google ads, optimizing the site for search engines, and writing blog posts are some of the latest requirements to run an effective website.
Understanding the SEO responsive web design benefits is crucial for a redesign.
Goals of An Updated Website
What are the goals that you hope to achieve when you are considering a website redesign?
A website must be designed for converting visitors. The information and click buttons on the website must be specially designed to fulfill the needs of its users and visitors. It should be designed for the target audience and potential customers.
What Goals Should We Have In a Website Redesign Process?
While redesigning a website, the following are the issues that must be addressed or taken care of.
- Analyzing the current aspects of performance and setting new benchmarks
- Setting performance goals for the new website
- Defining the website redesign process
- Analyzing the competition
- Choosing the right kind of Content Management System
For insights into competitor analysis, refer to Tech Artisans’ post on signs your brand needs a refresh.
Current Performance
Before redesigning the website, you must thoroughly analyze the current performance of your website. You must completely understand how is your website performing and what issues you need to address when you redesign your website.
Doing this will help you gain clarity on the fact that what are the aspects that you are doing fine in and what are the things that need to work most on.
When you are clear on the current performance, it will be easier for you to set new benchmarks for the performance standards.
New Performance Goals
When you are clear about the current performance and the things that you need improvements in while redesigning your website, you will then have to set goals for redesigning the website.
Setting up performance goals means that you will have to set goals for the performance of your new website. This means that you need to be very clear about the standards that your new website must meet. This will help later on in defining the goals for your redesign process
Goals of Website Redesign Process
Your website redesign process must have clear goals. These goals will be only after you have completely analyzed the current performance of your website and then set clear goals about what you need the performance to be like after the website has gone through the redesign process.
When the process begins, you will aim at the things that need improving in achieving those goals. These goals may include but are not limited to the following.
- Making your website friendly with Mobile devices
- Modifications needed according to a target audience
- Improving the process through which user data such as contact details are gathered.
- Adding or removing features according to the needs of the near future
- Improving the data and information about your services
- Improving overall speed
- Changing the looks, design landing pages, etc
- Changing or improving the codes and programming aspects of the website
All of these goals or some of them may be the goals of your redesign process.
Competition Analysis
Analyzing your competition and making the necessary changes according to it is necessary while running a website, or a business in general.
This does not mean you have to copy or replicate what your competitors are doing but still, you need to keep an eye on the latest market trends. Making swift and prompt adjustments to these ever-changing market changes is necessary for a good website to thrive.
For example, when Snapchat’s “stories” feature became popular, Instagram, Facebook, and other social media apps quickly added the feature, or a modified version of it to their platforms as well. This does not mean they are copying the innovators, but they are just adjusting to the new market requirements.
Being a market leader and innovator is the ideal place for a business to be, but sometimes, when you cannot be the first one to innovate something, it is best to be the second and adapt to the changing environment rather than just ignoring the reality and staying out
Choosing the Right Content Management System
As discussed above, the content management system is an important aspect to consider while redesigning a website.
Choosing the right kind of content management system for your website redesign process or website, in general, is crucial for the website to thrive. The content management system is the backbone of the website, it is the infrastructure that the website’s data uses. If this is up to the mark and according to the needs, the website will thrive.
Update or Redesign?
When you notice that you need site feature updates or when you see you need some minor updates in the codes or the technicalities of your website, you may just need to update it and not redesign the whole thing.
But when you see that everything on your website seems outdated, the fonts, the design, the working, the infrastructure, the codes, the way it works and the way it processes information, or the whole thing just needs a change for betterment, you might need a whole website redesign.
This can be understood by analyzing various factors which we discussed before like bounce rate, conversion rate, conversion tracking, and other user-related data.
In short, if users are not liking our website, we may need to redesign it.
Determine whether you need an update or a full redesign, as explained in Tech Artisans’ article on outdated websites costing your business revenue.
A Successful Website
To run a successful website, you must understand that there comes a time when you’ll need to redesign your website for it to be market-competitive.
You must keep an eye on other websites of the same market and genre and see what are they up to. If they have updated to a new design or added a new feature, your website may seem outdated to your users and will hurt the business.
For a deeper understanding, read Tech Artisans’ comprehensive guide on signs your website needs redesigning.
You need to redesign your website before this starts to happen because once a user visits your website and realizes that you don’t have the updated information of features on it, it is very hard to get such customers back. Such customers rarely come back because they have a picture in their minds about you that is very hard to change once it is formed.
The services you are providing go side by side with this update. The services you are providing or not providing must regularly be updated on your website.
Conclusion
In conclusion, how do you know if your website is due for a redesign?
The answer to this question is simple, you analyze the data. Analysis of both the qualitative and quantitative data will tell you if your website needs a redesign.
If the website is not serving the needs of the users, is not up to the mark, is outdated, or is technically not working well, it may need a redesign.
