I’ve been thinking about the lifecycle of small business websites a lot lately. I’m currently doing a redesign for a client, and I’m planning my fourth iteration of my own business site in the past five years.
While redesigning a website as much as I have mine is a little excessive, there are quite a few reasons why you would want to. In my case, the first site I built was fast. I wanted to get it up and start my business. The second draft took a little longer and looked a little better. It sat like that for about two and a half years. I had become a better designer, and I knew more about the tools I had at my disposal. Now, as I’m thinking about another redesign, it’s all about the tools again. Getting my message clearer, and all of those things that I think about putting into a client’s site need to be thought about for my own site. Many times, a web designer puts the least amount of effort into their own site.
There are several factors you should consider when thinking about redesigning your website. But remember – “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
Reasons for Redesigning a Website
- Outdated Design: Design trends go out of style rapidly, and this speed keeps ramping up. If your site is covered in Flash videos, aggressive popups, or a fixed background image – it may be time for an update.
- Technological Advancements: New technologies and web standards are released all of the time. These standards offer better performance, security, and user experience for your site visitors.
- User Experience (UX) Improvements: One of the most important aspects of your site is how your visitors interact with it. If your user experience is good, your visitors will stay on your site. If not, they will leave without buying/interacting.
- Mobile Responsiveness: Approximately 60% of website traffic comes from mobile devices, which means having a website optimized for mobile is crucial.
- SEO Optimization: While this task can be done without redesigning your entire site, if you do get your site redesigned, it is beneficial to optimize for search engine optimization at the same time. Hire a professional to do this. It’s worth it.
- Accessibility: Adapting to new accessibility standards to ensure the site is usable by everyone, including people with disabilities, is absolutely necessary. Being conscious of how others are able to interact with your site is a good thing. Not to mention, there are new laws being passed that will require sites to comply with accessibility standards. More on this in a future post.
- Business Goals & Branding: Sometimes our business goals change. Sometimes our branding changes. If you have major changes, you may want to do a full update of your website.
- Performance Issues: As mentioned above, tech keeps improving, and site visitors will not stand for slow load speeds. This is one of the biggest reasons for high bounce rates. Keeping your performance updated can help counteract this.
- Security Enhancements: Even the oldest websites can have good security if you have a solid maintenance and care plan. But, if you are using older technology that is no longer supported, you will want to update that ASAP. Do not leave your site plugins/themes/WordPress files (this applies only to WordPress websites) outdated and vulnerable to hackers.
One last word regarding this topic: If you decide to do a site redesign, make sure you consider all of the information, images, content, etc. that you will need prior to starting. Make sure your message to your customer is clear. This should be evident right when a visitor gets to your site. What problem are you solving? And I can’t stress this enough – please, please, please have good quality images. If you need to, hire a photographer to take professional images of your business/product. Many times, the images on your website are your potential customer’s first impression of your business. Make it good!
