5 Reasons to Give Yourself a Website Refresh
Websites age quickly. The second they’re launched, you’re in a race against time to ensure that they continue to perform at their optimum level. We’ve spoken before about website maintenance and everything that’s involved in keeping it up to date. However, even with proactive upkeep and the best will in the world, a website refresh should be scheduled on a semi-regular basis.
Generally, people tend to think a website needs a refresh whenever the design elements are out of date – in the same way you might buy new clothes or remodel your house. This is definitely a part of it, but there are other reasons you may need to consider giving your website a makeover.
1. Your Design Elements Need to Be Updated
We’ll begin with the most normal reason website owners decide to update their website – it no longer looks good. Your website’s visual branding plays a substantial role in how visitors perceive your business.
In fact, statistics show that 94% of first impressions of your website are directly related to its design. What’s more, it takes just 0.05 seconds for them to form that opinion.
If your design isn’t user focused it will have an impact on the entire experience. This will directly affect the number of conversions. This is because poor visual design can easily distract from the products or services you have on offer and the value you can bring as a business. This, in turn, will lower visitors’ trust in your business and have a negative effect on sales.
2. You’re Not Providing a Positive User Experience
The user experience or usability of your website is another aspect of design that drastically influences the level of success you experience. Take for example the trend of autoplaying videos on home pages that took off a few years ago.
Visually it looked great! It was bright, attention-grabbing, and impactful, but owners soon found that it wasn’t performing as they had expected. The reason for this was, although the design elements were top notch, the user experience was less than perfect. Not only do videos take up a lot of space and slow down the website, but they tended to distract from the main action owners wanted their visitors to take.
Another example of changing usability trends is the concept of having the most important information at the top of the website or above the fold. How you prioritize this information needs to be tweaked to make sure it performs well on mobile devices.
In general, user experience covers a lot of ground and it’s an area you should focus on heavily. For older websites, the whole site architecture may need to be reevaluated. You want to ensure solid paths to conversion for both desktop and mobile visitors.
3. Your Your Website is Vulnerable to Attack
Your website’s security cannot be ignored. While strong maintenance best practices should keep you safe or drastically minimize your risk, many business owners don’t have an established routine to protect themselves.
If this is you, it’s vital that you take active steps to audit your website and identify potential security risks. Your hosting partner may not be up to scratch, you have out-of-date plugins, or a number of other risks.
Considering that 60% of companies that suffer a significant breach go out of business within six months of the attack, it’s essential to take control of your security. In some cases, the easiest way to do this is through an entire website refresh.
4. You Need to Maintain Legal Standards
The internet moves at lightning speed. Trends, best practices, and algorithms change so frequently that we’re used to racing to keep up. Traditionally, the law moves much more slowly. Many of you will remember the earlier dys the internet, when there was very little legislation applicable to websites.
To put it bluntly, those days are over. Businesses are increasingly responsible for maintaining a range of legal standards. For any business who operates in Europe, ensuring you meet GDPR standards is a huge deal. If your website hasn’t been updated in a few years, it’s possible that you need to make changes for compliance.
Likewise, ADA guidelines – which ensure websites are accessible to all members of society – are increasingly front of mind among business owners. Not only is it our moral and ethical responsibility to include more users, but there has been an increase in the number of lawsuits filed.
5. You Are No Longer Optimized For Search Engines
Search Engine Optimization or SEO is a difficult area to keep up with. Google and other search engines are constantly updating their algorithms to ensure that the best and most relevant results are displayed. If you don’t stay on top of these ongoing changes, it’s impossible to remain competitive.
We’ve gone into detail before about everything that’s involved in SEO maintenance. Even if you do establish an SEO routine and keep up with these best practices, you may still find over time that you begin to dip in the results.
The fact is, every time Google updates their algorithms, your website could be affected. The older your website is, the more likely this is to be true. Beyond algorithm changes, older websites are generally more bloated, slower, or have other technical issues which influence how well they perform in SEO.
Expert Website Refresh With Pixel Jar
At Pixel Jar, we specialize in all-things WordPress – including full website refreshes. We understand that the world moves quickly and that standing out among your target audience is not easy.
If you think it’s time to give your website a makeover, reach out. We’ll provide honest, impartial advice to ensure you get the best results for your business.
