A strong digital presence is no longer a luxury for businesses – it is essential to your ongoing growth and success. Your website forms the foundation of this digital presence. No matter how people discover your business – via social media, recommendations from others they know, internet searches, or traditional marketing channels – they will visit your website to learn more. In this way, your website acts as the hub for all other marketing efforts and is the most crucial component.
Most people form an impression of your business within 0.5 seconds of visiting your website. This impression will dictate whether they stay on your website to learn more or leave to continue their search elsewhere. In addition, 88% of individuals are less likely to return to a website after a bad experience. A poorly designed website with outdated best practices, antiquated aesthetics and poor usability will have a devastating impact on your business long term.
For this reason, it is recommended that you redesign your website every two to three years. This will ensure that your website always utilizes the most up-to-date best practices and reflects the latest web design trends. Ultimately, this is the most effective way to ensure your website always provides the best possible experience year after year.
What Is a Website Redesign?
A website redesign involves rebuilding both the frontend and backend components of your website. The fronted components refer to the aspects of your website which impact the appearance, functionality and user experience. The backend components refer to the code used to power the frontend experience and functionality. During a redesign, you’ll have the ability to completely revamp the look and feel of your website. You can also add new features that will provide a better user experience and drive more leads.
You can achieve the following benefits from your website redesign:
- More cohesive brand identity
- Improved site performance
- Better SEO results
- Improved user experience
- Stay current on the latest web design best practices and trends
- Increased leads and sales
- Better site security
- Better alignment with the current needs and goals of your business
More Cohesive Brand Identity
One of the most important functions of your website is to convey your brand messaging and identity. Having brand consistency throughout your website will help you more effectively connect with your audience and build trust.
There are several reasons why your existing website may not maintain the consistent brand messaging you need:
- Your brand messaging and identity may evolve over time, and your website may not reflect your current branding
- One-off updates made by different people over the course of several years may result in inconsistent messaging that isn’t completely aligned with your overall brand strategy
When you redesign your website, it provides an opportunity to revisit your brand messaging. As part of the redesign process, you will be able to:
- Refresh your brand strategy to ensure it aligns with your current business vision and goals
- Revamp your color scheme to ensure it aligns with your established brand colors
- Craft a more cohesive brand story, ensuring that every page on your website conveys a consistent message
- Update any imagery on the website to ensure it more closely reflects your brand and appeals to your target audience
The end result will be a website that conveys a more powerful brand to your audience. This will significantly improve your ability to grow your brand awareness, build trust and convert leads.
Improved Site Performance
An outdated CMS can cause technical issues with your website. Your website may use old, bloated code that slows down your site speed. You may have broken links which take visitors to error messages instead of live pages. The site may have outdated functionality or a poor navigation structure which doesn’t address the needs of your visitors. All of these potential issues can have a devastating impact on the performance of your website.
Redesigning your website allows you to clean up all of these problems and improve your website performance:
- You can design the new website on a modern CMS that uses the latest code
- You can identify and remove all broken links from your website
- You can revisit the functionality of your website to ensure it addresses the specific needs of your target audience
- You can revamp your navigation structure and content strategy to provide the information your audience needs in a well-organized manner that makes every page easy to find
This will improve your site performance and provide a much better user experience. By doing so, you’ll significantly improve your website’s ability to grow your business.
Better SEO Results
You can have a beautiful website with highly informative content and strong brand messaging, but if people can’t find your website, it won’t help your business grow. SEO is a crucial tool to improve your search rankings and drive website traffic. Google’s search algorithms are constantly being updated, which means that SEO best practices evolve at a rapid rate. If your current website employs SEO tactics that are several years old, you may not be generating the best possible search engine results.
When you redesign your website, you have the ability to implement the latest SEO best practices during the website design and development process. This will help improve your search rankings and increase your chances of getting noticed by your target audience.
Some ways …