There is no question that the online marketplace has changed the way consumers shop throughout the world. Redesigning a website is no small task. However, sometimes a site redesign is a necessity. Indeed, you may need a site redesign at this moment without realizing that your current site is not sufficient for your needs. The questions both large and small business owners must ask themselves are whether a site redesign is needed and why.
Look at competitors’ websites to get an idea about whether or not you need a site redesign. Are their sites more robust? Do they offer features that yours does not? Are they cleaner and easier to navigate? Also, consider your traffic. If you are getting fewer visitors, it could be due to a poorly designed site, a site that is out of date, or a site that is in need of keyword-driven traffic.
Regardless of the type of business you operate, your website should use clear, concise language. A good way to gauge the readability and navigation of your site is to ask someone who is unfamiliar with it to test it out. Ask them how easy it was to find information, if it was simple to understand, or if they found it confusing. Also, your site should be consistent with social media. Visitors need to be able to go back and forth from your site to your other online marketing tools, like blogs and social media pages, with little effort or interruption.
Once the question of whether you need to have a site redesign is answered, you can move on to the question of when. If your site has not been updated in several years, the answer is immediately. Great strides have been made in technology, which makes older websites look out-of-date and uninteresting to most viewers. A technique called Responsive Web Design allows your site to be viewed across multiple types of media without having to create different pages for various screen sizes. This gives you better access to more potential customers who may only view Internet pages on their mobile devices. Even if your site has been updated recently, you can only benefit from a site redesign if it is not accessible to all people in all ways.
