Why Your Business Needs a Website Redesign

Posted by Tomas McKannie

Business website redesign

As much as 94% of website impressions are design-related.

The same amount of shoppers do not trust eCommerce websites that have an outdated design.

Your business may be in dire need of a website redesign, yet you may not know it.

So how do you know whether you are ready for a new website?

This post looks into several main factors that point at website redesign as the solution for improving your website performance, lead and sales generation.

The Design is Not User-Friendly

88% of website visitors will not return after a bad experience.

Not having a user-friendly design can mean a lot of things:

• Poor, unintuitive navigation
• Distracting visual and graphic elements
• Noncomplementary colors
• Nonfunctional links
• Slow loading speeds (we’ll talk about this more later in the article)

Sleek design and intuitive navigation is what website visitors of 2021 are accustomed to. You need to provide these qualities in order to communicate your business’s unique offerings in the most effective way.

Trying to showcase everything your business does can come across as overwhelming and result in a website that is difficult to navigate.

If your visitors have hard time discovering content on your website and finding what they’re looking for, this leaves a very negative first impression. The outcome? High bounce rates.

Obsolete, heavy website architecture with a lot of plugins and outdated technology affects the overall experience as well.

A website redesign can fix this lack of order and structure, eliminate excess elements, provide enough breathing space between blocks of content and improve overall visual consistency.

Your Business Website Does Not Reflect Your Brand Accurately

If your website’s look and feel are not aligned with your brand’s core values, mission and tone of voice, you risk alienating and confusing your highly-qualified prospects.

For a credible, professional business, it is critical that your website fully reflects your brand’s every aspect –  from the logo and brand colors to recognizable copy and messaging.

Perhaps your website and brand were aligned once but no longer are: sometimes this discrepancy happens when a business is growing and its brand and marketing evolve.

If that happens, it is important to get back on track and perform a website redesign that will represent your brand accurately by capturing its essence.

A website redesign, as any upstanding web design company will point out, is one of the vital parts of a wider rebranding strategy. Its purpose is to (re)align your brand’s visual and messaging aspects from across other digital channels with your website.

This helps attract and retain leads and prospects, improves brand recognition and market visibility and results in higher revenue.

Your Mobile Website Is Not Responsive

Today’s websites must be mobile-savvy: over 50% of internet traffic is happening on smartphones and this number will continue to rise in the coming years.

If your website doesn’t display as well on mobile devices as on desktop and if the mobile user experience is sub-par, you’re due for a redesign.

A mobile-friendly website provides the best user experience to smartphone and tablet users due to its intuitive and natural navigation. The functionality of the website adjusts to the device, while the business’s visual identity stays the same.

A responsive website redesign would make it possible for your website’s visitors to navigate and experience your primary digital channel consistently across all devices.

Another important consideration in favor of mobile-friendly websites is that they are good for SEO. Google takes a website’s responsiveness into account when ranking them in search results, and those that are well-optimized for smartphones have a clear advantage.

This, in turn, affects your business’s credibility, CTRs and lead generation for the better.

The Website is Loading Slowly

40% of visitors will leave a website that takes three or more seconds to load, and fast-loading websites have 70% longer session times. If your website is loading slowly, it’s time for a redesign.

A fast-loading website is a primary tool in retaining visitors and successfully acquiring new ones.

If you are unsure of how your current website is performing in terms of loading speed when compared to others, you can use  online tools such as Google’s PageSpeed to find out.

Common reasons for slow page loading times include:

• Images that are too big
• Excess of embedded third-party media
• Poor hosting provider
• Untidy code
• A website that loads slowly impacts your traffic influx negatively, as well as impressions, CTRs, conversion rates and SEO visibility. How fast websites load is another signal that Google uses in order to rank websites in search engines.

While there are short-term solutions that may speed-up your existing website – such as image and code compressing plugins – the best results are achieved with a thorough redesign, which follows these best practices:

• Optimizing images for web
• Using a fast, dedicated hosting
• Minifying the PHP, HTML, CSS, JV and other core files
• Keeping the layout simple and to-the-point
• Reduce the number of third-party plugins and components
• Use browser caching
• Your Competitors Have The Upper Hand

A very legitimate reason to want to redesign your business website is if you feel like your competitors have an upper hand.

Your website is not a bubble – as soon as an industry trend takes over, your competitors will very likely act on it. You shouldn’t trail behind.

Evaluate your competitor’s websites, critically and expertly.

Your website may be ready for redesign if you find:

• Their SEO is more effective : Your website should be visible as much as possible to your prospects searching for your offering online. If your direct competitors rank higher for more keywords than you, you should  opt for an SEO-focused website redesign that will help you catch up with them. This type of redesign should always have an SEO expert that will make sure your ranking efforts are not in vain.
• They have better content and functionalities : Look beyond the design and appearance of your competitors’ websites and observe their content and functionality. If you realize that they are doing better than you in this respect, it’s time you look for a web design agency that can help you outperform them.

Their overall design is more cutting-edge : Look at your direct competitors’ websites. What do you like about them?  If you find yourself wishing you had a website as creative and compelling as one of your competitors’, make it happen. Your business deserves a website you can be proud of.

Conclusion – Business website redesign

There are many reasons why your website may be in need of a redesign: from slow-loading pages to poor search engine ranking and low conversion rates.

It is important to recognize the symptoms of an outdated and obsolete website that has become a roadblock between your business and its growth.

Once you have identified your website’s main design issues and set objectives for the new website, consider getting in touch with web design experts who will take ownership of your project and deliver the expected results.