10 Reasons To Redesign Your Website
Designing a website from scratch to finish is not only expensive on money matters, but aside from time element also, a lot of effort and collaboration are required to achieve a truly functional and appealing website that visitors would love.
Taking all these into consideration, it can be hard to swallow if we consider a website revision or redesign. Will it be really necessary to do so? Am I that willing to repeat the hard steps again? What will happen if not?
Website redesign may root from a lot of reasons, purpose, or cause, but its effect can be very refreshing and appealing, i.e., if it is done right.
Today, I am going to shout out some strong reasons why you should consider a website redesign, and some precautions to make your decision fully plausible and hence practical.
Take note at first that though website revisions is a great option to funnel the audience back to you, there are still a lot of dangers associated with it.
Remember also that a website design is not simply a matter for the eyes or for the sensual appetites; it must be more for the function and must be established on an intelligent ground.
The design must serve a purpose, and it must be a guiding principle for visitors to better know what you do and what you offer. In other words, a good website design is that which responds to the visitors’ needs. It can be in a form of product, a service, but most of all, an experience.
Listed below are some great reasons why you should consider redesigning your website. One among these ten reasons would highly recommend doing so at once.
1. Your website is ugly.
Well, you might be guessing some technical reason for a website revision, but don’t you think that one of the biggest reason for doing so is because your site is just ugly?
I do not need to explain the term ‘ugly’ much better, but I would like to emphasize the word ‘unpleasant.’ Being almost perfectly synonymous, remember that your website must give at least a warm welcome to visitors, as much as you want to visit a well-organized house and keep coming back.
Does your website contain too much visual noise? Are the colors of your site too vibrant or saturated? Does your website look dry and wasted? Does the designer behind the website look amateur?
Be careful though and always remember that how you see your website does not necessarily equate to the way other people see it. You may be tempted to do so because you are already bored.
Did you ask yourself how many times do you visit the site each day, in contrast to how many times visitors do in a week? More so, a large fraction of visitors you have would want to keep the same design because that is what is familiar to them.
“Put your best foot forward,” goes the saying. You do not always need to make your website aesthetically stunning, but something that is suitable for the word ‘enough’ is enough.
2. Too much noise
I have mentioned about visual noise a while ago, but I would like to give a bigger room to the word ‘noise’ here.
What I mean with the word in the design context is that, are there a lot of distracting elements on your website that detract your audience from being directed to the right action?
Yes, you may have a call-to-action button there, but your visitors just keep looking at something else.
Something may be overly bothering there. You may have a slider, but it crashes even before the visitor would finish looking at each slide one after the other.
There are a lot of banners and sparkling advertisements. Your navigation bar is too long, not to mention the side bar that you have there. You have too much social networking plugins. What else? You know it.
An important element or principle of art here that should be maintained is contrast. Contrast allows hierarchy of content to be more clarified, and it also gives way to the stronger elements less the weaker ones. By allowing contrast to funnel your visitors to the ‘best foot’ that you are showing, you will get better results.
3. Problems with optimization and strategy
I am not directly talking about SEO here or any numerical values that is usually aimed mistakenly. What I mean is that, does your website work well in marketing your product, for example? Does your design guide your visitors into subscribing on what you offer? Does the right content fall on the right place or section of a page? Are pages properly organized and neatly presented? Do you achieve the stats that you expect, like leads, sales, or memberships?
You may also want to check if your page load time is taking longer than expected. Are the images you used optimized for web display? Is your site loaded with a lot of videos? Are there too many links that make your text too colourful? Are the paragraphs on your articles longer than four sentences?
4. Your website design is old.
This is actually among the most reason why people think about redesigning their websites. According to recent studies, people often revise their website designs after 6-12 months. The biggest reason? Boredom.
Having an old website design is actually not the big thing here to push you into revising your design. What must really convince you to do so is if the practice that you are still using is no longer effective, or is no longer that appealing to your audience as it once did a year back. If that old design still works, then there’s not really a big need to redesign your site, unless you have other contributing reason.
5. Going with the trend
Website designs has its own way of marching on the fashion line, and by always making your website up to par with the ‘fashion of the time,’ you are indirectly telling your visitors that you are always fresh, well-informed, and friendly.
By doing so, you must not sacrifice efficiency which is the stronger factor to retaining your audience. Remember that design must be used as a tool for something, and by updating your design to the latest or ongoing one, make sure that it still serves the same powerful purpose of guiding your visitors on the right track.
6. Synchronization with other media
If you are marketing your stuff using other types of media such as prints and flyers, radio ads or podcasts, TV commercials or programs, and you notice that you aren’t selling as much as those media would do, then you better think about enhancing your website design.
7. Optimization for devices
Since the entrance of smart devices such as phones, phablets, and tablets, website owners are more than compelled to make their site optimized and ready for these modern devices. Optimizing means that your site must look the same, if not to adapt the screen size it is trying to fit, without distorting elements or putting the order of content into a visual chaos.
With the latest technologies also, however, you must also realize that your site’s design may or may not retain its original look once it is optimized. Sometimes a tune-up on your source codes can already make your existing design fit into smaller screen sizes with virtually no noticeable difference in looks at all. You might also want to consult your designer for making your design flow, and by this, your website design can adjust its layout in real-time and on the fly as the screen or window size is being altered along.
8. Introduction or revision of objective/s
If you are already selling a different product, if you are already offering a different service, or if you are trying to achieve a different objective aside from simply selling something, then a website redesign is necessary. By doing so, not only are you giving room to the new content or to the update, but you are also sorting out the elements and content according to importance and according to how you want your visitors to be directed.
9. You are now bigger (or smaller).
A website redesign is necessary if you are also planning to introduce a longer line of products outside of a specific product that you already own or sell. If your business is also branching out, if you are about to introduce blogging, if you think your new products need an extra category, then a redesign is not to be missed, or else everything will look cramped on your site.
The same rule goes when you dismissed a line of product and wanted to concentrate on a particular product after all. Much so, you should also consider website redesign if you want to isolate a product for its own website outside of the original one. Take consideration also that if you think you can fit all your content on four different pages rather than expanding them on ten pages, then do so.
10. Integration of newer tools or systems
I have mentioned about making your website fit on screens, but that is just a part of a bigger thing here. Very often new tools and ways of doing things are introduced, and website designing and maintenance is not excluded here. You may not know yet, but your website’s page load time may dramatically improve if you employ a particular tool or if you use a new programming language. You may also want to keep yourself updated with the latest plug-ins that will really help you achieve your goals. There may also be a new and better CMS (content-management system), a better web hosting solution, a better way of organizing your content, and so on.
Keeping your website up and ready with these new tools and resources will not only boost your site’s performance, but will also give your visitors a brand new experience, or at least something that will make them feel refreshed whenever they visit your site.
Your site don’t always have to look like that of Apple, and in fact, you don’t always need a redesign every 6 months. As long as you maintain the beauty of your site, and as long as you ensure that everything is working as listed on your goals, then your site will always be effective for your visitors regardless the time.
