5 Reasons To Redesign Your Website

You launched that shiny new website a handful of years ago, you paid darn good money for it, and maybe it’s been working for you — meeting your goals and all that. But lately you’ve been reading and hearing all this stuff about content management, SEO, and social media. Does any of that mean it’s time for a redesign? Maybe. Or maybe just a few changes are in order. A tweak here and there, a little rethinking, some added content, or maybe some social media trinkets sprinkled around.

So, how do you know when it’s time to scrap and start over — or when just a bit of sensible remodeling might be in order?

Here are five issues to consider.

1. Your Site Is Built Entirely In Flash™.

If you don’t care about search engines or most mobile users, don’t change a thing. But if you do, it’s time to rethink the whole program. While your Flashy site may have been pitched as all the rage from a branding and “user experience” perspective (we never bought into this), it may well be largely invisible to search engines. While Google and other search engines are doing a better job at reading text in Flash-based pages, it’s still not perfect, and it’s still a problem because many Flash based designs are very dependent on graphics for navigation, content, etc. And plain text is still what makes the web go round (mostly). But the real issue isn’t that Flash can’t be optimized for search (SEO). The problem is, it’s difficult, it’s time consuming, and implementation is inconsistent from search engine to search engine. You have other marketing challenges to attend to. Do you really need to add another one to your plate with a Flash-based site?

And don’t get me started on Flash intro pages. If you need to add a link that says “skip intro” you have to ask yourself, “Is this content relevant?”. I’m willing to bet that little “skip this” text link is the most active click-through on your entire site.

As for mobile users and Flash, many have a tough time with it because of the bandwidth requirements, and some (iPhone™) can’t view your site at all. And don’t kid yourself, more and more of your site visitors are hitting your pages with smart phones.

So when it comes to Flash – rethink, retool, rebuild.

2. You Can’t Manage Your Own Content.

The days of calling your “webmaster” to update your ‘About Us’ page are long gone, my friend. Any site, even the two-pager from the local Pizza guy, should be running on a Content Management System (CMS). With a CMS you’re not dependent on anyone but yourself to make changes, correct outdated information, and add content. There are CMS options ranging from free to several thousand dollars. A properly implemented site designed around a good CMS allows you to easily update content, add pages, change navigation, and add and manage images, video, and other media. We develop our website projects on WordPress and our clients love it, but you have other choices. So get your site redesigned on a CMS.

3. Your Site Isn’t Optimized For Search Engines.

For most sites, well-qualified traffic from search engines is important – vitally important. If you aren’t meeting your search goals, or you aren’t showing up in the search engines at all, your problem can be related to any combination of issues from the key words and key phrases you’re targeting, to on-page issues like properly formed title tags or properly structured content. Your search dilemma could also be a bigger issue relating to the structure of your site, navigation, improperly formed URL’s, the presence of a sitemap and more. All of these considerations fall under the heading of Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Whatever the underlying cause of your poor search performance, the first step in improving your performance is to establish a benchmark with a Search Engine Optimization Review. An SEO Review of your site will give you valuable insight into the changes needed and will tell you whether a redesign is in order, or if changes can be made to your existing site to improve your performance.

If a redesign truly is the only antidote for your search blues, then before you start the redesign process you need a search strategy. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) begins with a definition of who your target audiences are, what words and phrases they may use to search for your business, and how competitive those keywords and phrases are. After that, content strategies, site structure considerations, and linking strategies all come into play.

4. Your Site Isn’t Very Sociable.

Like it or not, the web has gone social. And spreading your brand message through social media hubs like Facebook™, Twitter™, LinkedIn™ and the like are an effective way to engage your current customers and create new leads. Enabling your content to be distributed through social media is as simple as adding social sharing hooks like ShareThis, AddThis, and others to your site pages and blog posts (you do have a blog, right?). You can take the process a step further by setting up RSS feeds for your blog and promoting your Twitter and Facebook accounts throughout your site.

Content management systems (CMS) like WordPress make socializing your site much easier with plugins, built-in functions, and template based social connections that appear consistently throughout your site.

5. You Site Code Is Outdated.

If your site was designed more than three or four years ago, chances are pretty high that it’s built with outdated, bloated code that can make it difficult to update and is slower to load. I’m surprised at the number of sites still using tables and other outdated techniques. Modern site code produces much cleaner and leaner code that separates the content of the site from the design elements, making the site much easier to update in the future.

Is It Time To Redesign Your Website?

This article covers only a handful of functional reasons that a redesign may be in order. But when you start to evaluate your current web strategy from a marketing perspective, the list can get much, much longer. Does your site reflect your current brand positioning? Is your site meeting your conversion goals? Are you generating truly qualified leads or just churning inquiries? Does your site reflect your marketing aspirations?

Before you consider a redesign, give some thought to the basics. Who’s your audience? What is the purpose of your site? How will you benchmark and measure success? And keep the five points above in mind.

What do you think? Have some questions or anything to add?