In case you didn’t know, you probably need a website redesign. Why? Technology, consumer demands, and media platforms change so rapidly that the site you built even a few months ago might not be hacking it the way you had previously predicted. Of course, most small business owners can’t afford to give their website a total makeover every few months.
It’s pretty easy to become one-sided when looking at your own website. Delving into the nitty-gritty details of user experience requires an objective look outside yourself, your platform, and your own creation and a look into what you’re projecting to potential customers on an amorphous technical landscape. This will never be a one-stop quick fix, couple lines of code and we’re good to go — it’s a constant effort.
We’ve got some things to watch out for so you won’t have to do a website overhaul but make website redesigning a living process and a part of constant maintenance.
Finger always on the pulse
More people are using mobile devices, be they tablets, phones, wearables, it doesn’t matter. Some 50% of all mobile search queries are aimed at finding local results, and 61% of those end in a purchase. If your site isn’t adapting to mobile technologies at the same rate that mobile technologies are being churned out of Silicon Valley, you’re doing it wrong, which means you’re doing it too slowly. That’s a massive percentage of potential buyers to lose out on, especially for local businesses. When new hardware and software is hitting the market, test your website on all of them and adjust the user experience accordingly. One site, easy use on as many devices as possible.
Fortunately, this is really easy to test! If you use the Chrome web browser, here’s how to test how your website looks on different devices:
- Pull up your homepage, services pages, or other key landing pages in a desktop or laptop.
- Right click and hit the “Inspect” option at the bottom of the menu.
- A window of code will appear. On the top left side of this window you should see a small icon with a mobile device icon. Click on it.
- From this view, your website will be displayed as it would appear on a smaller mobile device.
- Click the drop down menu with the word “Responsive,” then choose the iPHone or Android device you want to test.
Google owns you
Maybe they don’t own you literally, but they run the search engine that billions of people are searching through on a daily basis. That means they control the algorithmic process that returns search results. Of course, this means that the rules of SEO are determined, updated, changed, and reformatted by the great and powerful Google. Not paying heed to those changes will hurt your website’s rankings. Stay woke.
Refresh it anyway
Think of it like clothing. Just because an outfit worked in the 60s doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be updated. In the same way, just because your site works doesn’t mean it has to remain that way. The number one killer of websites is stale content and design. Follow the flow of design styles. What’s in? What’s out? What are people searching for? Is your content tight? Can you update anything? When you aren’t challenging the effectiveness of your website, you’re falling victim to web design stagnancy; bounce rate is born from bored users to whom a website speaks nothing.
A website redesign is a constant process that’ll return the investment of time in the exposure of your products to potential customers. Nobody is saying that your website is currently terrible, but it should always be tweaked for little improvements on the go. Don’t get too comfortable with the current state of your website, challenge your boundaries and flow with the tide of tech.
