Your business is thriving. The company is growing, attracting new customers, and leading in its industry. You’re on the verge of your next level of business achievement – but are you really tapping into all the potential available for your brand? As an innovative business, your digital footprint is a crucial part of amplifying your ultimate success. If your business is on the cusp of expansive growth but your website fails to reflect your progress, it could be hurting business more than you realize.
Don’t let an outdated website hold your business back from potential growth. Here’s how to know it’s time for a redesign:
Your website doesn’t have a clear objective.
Your website should be working for you. It’s a tool to accomplish a specific purpose for your business, and if it’s to be used effectively, you have to know how to use that tool. Take a minute to evaluate what kind of tool your website is for your company (examples here). Do you need it to generate new leads? Increase sales? Educate your consumers and prospective customers? Increase brand awareness? Although having a web presence is crucially important in this day and age, having a website without a clear purpose may be costing you valuable business. Develop a purposeful site: Determine a clear objective. Set a measurable goal. Then build a site that will help you reach that goal.
If your website doesn’t have a clear objective informing its design, it’s time for a redesign.
Your website is a poor representation of your current brand.
Your business is not static. It’s constantly evolving and growing to keep up with external shifts like cultural movements, economic conditions, staff turnover, and (hopefully) business growth. If you build your website to reflect your company at a certain point in time but don’t maintain it, your business will continue to evolve and leave your website in the dust. In a couple years, your abandoned website will end up a poor reflection of your brand. Have you updated your branding or logo but not on your website? Have you added new services? Changed your messaging? Redefined your target audience? A website that doesn’t reflect your current business is doing you a disservice and misrepresenting your brand. You may lose qualified leads by appearing outdated or not gaining their attention with the solutions they’re seeking. Your website should be a modern and advantageous representation of your business that you’re proud to display to potential customers.
If you feel too embarrassed by your antiquated website to direct customers to it, it’s time for a redesign.
Your website is making your competition look REAL good.
Every company has competitors. Are you doing everything you can to attract business away from competitors, or are you simply driving it towards them? Your website’s design is a fundamental element shaping your brand’s reputation to potential and current customers. Your site is the visual representation of the quality your organization provides. Customers are looking for brands they can trust – brands they know will offer value, create reliable products, and provide the solutions they’re seeking. If your site is outdated, it signals a red flag to potential customers that you don’t invest in quality. They’ll quickly bounce and find someone else who does.
If your website makes visitors question the quality of your brand and seek solutions elsewhere, it’s time for a redesign.
You’re not optimizing based on analytics.
As the saying goes, what gets measured gets improved. Your current website likely has access to powerful tools with valuable data that can help optimize performance. But if you’re viewing the analytics and not making changes based on the results, the data is worthless. Too many companies neglect proper web maintenance and optimization because they don’t have access to edit web pages or the admin role is too complex. These restrictions slow down your business and hold you back from growth. Instead, you should be able to own your website. It should be developed in a way that non-technical staff can make updates and adjustments based on analytics.
If your site can’t be optimized because it’s too complicated to make updates, it’s time for a redesign.
Your website has convoluted structure and navigation.
Are you directing your customers to a maze of information on your site, then expecting them to find their own way? For a website to effectively engage visitors, it’s crucial to determine who your audience personas are, then map out the anticipated path for each of those customers. Who’s visiting your site? Why are they coming? Where are they likely wanting to go? It’s your job to then guide them on a clear path directly to their destination rather than force them to navigate through muddled information on their own. Content should be easily accessible with engaging messaging, limited clicks, and clear calls to action. Websites with convoluted structure create a frustrating user experience that quickly deters potential customers. Similarly, a lack of calls to action will miss the opportunity to drive traffic to certain pages and convert leads.
If visitors are coming to your site but bouncing out of frustration or confusion, it’s time for a redesign.
Your website can’t keep visitors’ attention.
A sad new fact in our current generation: the average human attention span is 6-8 seconds. A goldfish’s is 9. If your website is going to attract and keep the attention of visitors, it has to have engaging, easily-digestible content, both visually and verbally. Translation: compelling images and short, bite-sized phrases are a must. Within the first few seconds of visiting your site, a user should be able to answer: what is this site about, does it capture my attention, what am I supposed to do, and do I want to share this experience with someone else? Websites that are too wordy or present poor aesthetics may get traffic, but you can expect that traffic to have an astronomical bounce rate thanks to an inundation of content on your site. Too much information loses interest and loses business.
If your website’s content fails to engage visitors because it’s overwhelming or boring, it’s time for a redesign.
Your website isn’t producing relevant, engaging content.
If no new information is ever added to your website, why should anyone ever come back? An effective website leverages the use of a blog to continually invite visitors back by offering engaging and informative content. Essentially, a blog will lay the red carpet for your business to present itself as a subject-matter expert in your industry with recurring new content. It keeps your site fresh on search engines and demonstrates to consumers that your business aims to provide value to their lives. Your site may be getting traffic, but if you’re not taking advantage of the opportunity to delight your customers with insightful content on a blog, you’re losing the chance to build trust, further engage them, and develop loyal ambassadors for your brand.
If your website is lacking a blog that gives visitors a reason to come back, it’s time for a redesign.
Your website lacks proper functionalities for your business.
This one is simple. Your website should have the proper functionalities to do what you need it to do. For example, if you sell products in a store that you’d like to offer online, but your website has no e-commerce feature built in, you’re missing a substantial amount of sales that would come online. If you have multiple locations that you want customers to be able to find easily but don’t have a map on your site to identify the nearest location, you’re losing potential business that would be walking straight into your doors. The development of your website should incorporate all functions and plugins your business needs for success. After you determine your website’s objective, consider what functionalities your website needs to help drive new business growth. Don’t settle for a site that doesn’t have the bells and whistles your business really needs.
If your website is lacking features and functions that would promote growth, it’s time for a redesign.
When your website is definitely ready for a redesign…
Sometimes a limited or outdated website can do more harm to your business than good. For a brand that’s booming, a poorly designed website can be a major setback and cost you business. If any of these website issues resonate with you, it’s time for a redesign – because your business deserves an effective tool for growth and a powerful representation of your brand.
If your business is ready for change, we’re ready to help you create it. For the last 15 years, HMG Creative has worked with brands around the globe to help businesses achieve success. With a niche in brand development and web design for companies on the cusp of expansive growth, HMG Creative offers all the creativity, expertise and innovation your company needs for a modern and effective digital presence. Through engaging, data-driven design, tailored to fit your exact needs, HMG can provide a web solution that will launch your brand to its next level of business success.
[button size=”large” type=”square” color=”light-blue” icon=”double-angle-right” url=”/services/websites/”]Tell Me More![/button]