If you think that your site fails to show advancement or growth over the years, and is not enhancing your business in the way you expected, then there are high chances that your website is not merely lagging behind from the aesthetic standpoint, but also lack such features that help your business grow. If so, then it is high time you should consider a redesign.
This article discusses 10 of the most important points that will help you evaluate your site’s performance, and help you decide whether you need to redesign your website immediately.
Like we discussed in our other articles, a website is the representative, or the ‘online face’ of a company, and, naturally, you should take pride sharing it with others. However, if, under any situation, you discover yourself feeling shaky or reluctant to share it with people, then it’s a clear signal that it’s time you get a new website.
In certain cases, looks mean everything, and do matter! Though it is important to make sure that your website is functioning accurately, it also important that it looks fresh, and has a ‘sleek’, modern look, and does not seem to have got stuck in some classical digital era.
Although there is no specified rule as to how long your site can last on the World Wide Web, but, in order to cope up with the strides of modern-day technology, the best practice is to go for a new design. With this, you will also be privileged from the standpoint of the top search engines.
At present, more than half (52%, according to Statistica) of website traffic comes via mobile devices like cell phones, tabs, or similar handheld gadgets. Also, top search engines like Google, Bing or Yahoo have based their ranking on the mobile-friendliness of a site. Keeping this in mind, you should consider redesigning your site compatible and responsive to mobile devices.
If you discover someday that your traffic has started going down alarmingly, or has shown a considerable fall in leads or conversions, then you must reconsider getting some good advice from software experts about upgrading, redesigning, or even rebuilding your site afresh.
As most people say, you must not follow someone blindly, but learn to be unique, following your instinct and what you think is right. However, when it comes to competitors, it is expected that you are all equipped and prepared to face them and emerge as the winner. So, if you see that most of your fellow business owners have changed their websites, made them up-to-date, and additionally, started getting more and more visitors, then it is high time you should also plan for the same.
All that you do with your website, from designing and functionalities, to giving offers, text/graphic contents, etc., are for your visitors/users. Hence, if these features are not user-friendly, or somehow, become difficult for the visitors to navigate, you will simply fail to keep them, and resultantly, your bounce rate increases. To fix this issue, you need to reconsider designing your website in order to improve user experience, researching accordingly and devise new plans as to how you can make your site attractive to stop them from leaving your site.
Your site might often need changes and updates, depending on what your business is of. In such cases, if you think that, simple things like updating your site, posting blogs, adding images or changing the description of products, are taking a long time, then you can be sure that your CMS (content management system) was not built in an easy platform, and you should consider making one at the earliest.
Studies say, visitors are more likely to abandon your website, if it is slow, or takes more than 3 seconds to load. Moreover, every additional second leads 7% fewer conversions.
HTTPS is a secured transmission protocol, and this technology is used in most of the modern-day ecommerce sites, keeping you behind strong online protection against hackers and viruses. If your website is not using this security feature, your visitors or potential customers might feel threatened about their personal data being compromised or misused, and even be afraid of proceeding with any kind of financial transactions with you. Thus, it is always safe for you to ensure your website’s security.
Going through all the above points, we believe, you can now assess easily whether your website needs a change, or how urgent it is to do so. While the primary motto of any eCommerce site is to convert its visitors into customers, you should make sure that the design, as well as the structure of your site does not stand as a barrier; and it is also important that you learn to identify the problems that are acting as hindrance to your site’s performance.