Being an Orange County web design company for a good number of years we have heard this question continuously come up.
“How often should you redesign a website?”
First, making sure your website design is always up-to-date is essential to the success of your business. Web Design trends come and go, and a good layout today could be outdated tomorrow.
Your website design also affects your overall user experience, so you owe it to your audience to constantly fine tune it and make sure they always have the best experience every time they visit your site.
What this means is there is no exact recommended timeline to when you need to redesign your website. You simply need to look out for cues and indicators that will tell you when the time is right to do a website redesign.
Website redesign demands that you take a strategic approach to it. Before you begin, try to assess the current state of your website and establish what works and what doesn’t.
– Have you met your goals?
– Which goals are yet to be met?
Then look at what currently works for your competitors and other sites in your niche to determine any new strategies that you need to employ if you want to boost traffic to your site. Only then can you know exactly what you want to achieve through the website redesign.
How Can You Tell That Your Website Is Ready To Be Redesigned?
If you are wondering whether your website needs to be redesigned, there is a simple way to know. You need to ask yourself a series of questions:
Has your website stopped performing the way you want it to?
As a website owner, traffic is your bread and butter. The more traffic you get on your website, the easier you pay your rent. Huge web traffic brings with it paying customers. This is why you need to constantly promote your site to get these paying customers. A good website is one that performs well and constantly meets your targets.
However, all this is easier said than done. Websites tend to run really well when they are fresh and regularly promoted. After some time, they will suddenly start dropping in performance. When this happens, the simplest solution is to refresh them and get them looking and feeling new again.
People are attracted to great site layouts, so constantly update yours to keep things fresh. And don’t forget you’re content. It needs to be original, high quality and helpful to your audience.
Basically, if your website is not performing the way you want it to, you have to redesign it and improve its SEO, content, and aesthetics so that you can get more traffic and consequently get more paying customers.
Does it meet your goals?
Goals can generally be categorized as either short term or long term. Some of the short term goals that a person may have with regards to their website include something like earning an extra $1,000 per month from it or getting a 40% increase in submissions. Short term goals are meant to be achieved within a short period of time.
Long term goals, on the other hand, are the most important ones when it comes to any business. All your business decisions need to keep you on track towards achieving your long term goals.
You need to consider starting small and building your business from the ground up. But you need to make sure your goals are being met as you do. If you are falling short, stagnating or losing ground, a website redesign could be the solution you need to rejuvenate your business and get things up and running once more.
Has the purpose of your website changed?
In any online business, you need to have a clear purpose for everything you do. Your purpose will give you a clear definition or reason for making every business decision. A good example is when you change your website from a stand-alone billboard site to an interactive one.
Lead generating websites or interactive websites are different because they have user-driven paths. In this scenario, purpose goes hand in hand with goals, even though it’s a bit different.
Before you make huge changes to your site, you need to be certain about what you want from your site. And ask yourself whether your website has achieved its purpose so far.
A simple rule of thumb to always keep in mind is this: When your site’s purpose changes, website design also has to change.
Has it become unattractive?
A number of things can make your site feel unattractive. One of these factors is trends. Is your site outdated? Well if you feel like it is, you need to take a close look at what is trending. As time goes by, websites have become more user-friendly. Old sites often lack features that many web users look for.
Logos and color schemes can also affect your site’s marketing. Your site’s appearance should match what you are selling. If the two do not match, then you ought to do an update. Try to match your site with your brand, digital marketing, social media, print materials, and storefront.
Another important thing you need to keep in mind is your site’s mobile friendliness. Your mobile users need to enjoy your site as much as those on PC, otherwise, they will leave.
Final Thoughts
Website redesign and maintenance is a continuous process. As long as you have your business online, you will always have to keep tweaking it to provide your audience with the best possible user experience.
There is no perfect design, and there is no one-size-fits-all solution. So the question remains, how often to redesign a website? The answer is simple: as often as you need to.
LightHouse Graphics is an Orange County web design company that specializes in several areas of online presence, including website design, social media management, and content creation. If your business needs assistance in these areas, contact us. We’d love to work with you.
