Look for These 9 Warning Signs That You Need a Website Redesign

website redesign

Every website at some point or another is going need to be redesigned. But how do you know when it’s the right time to start this process?

You’ll be happy to know that there are some clear signs that’ll let you know when a website needs to be redesigned.

Keep reading for nine warning signs that will let you know the time has come for a website redesign. Read until the end and you’ll be able to look at any website and tell whether it’s due for a redesign.

1. It’s Slow to Load

If your website isn’t loading quickly, you can be sure that there are plenty of people who visit your site and then leave. A lot of people expect a website to load quickly and if your takes to long they’re not going to stick around for long.

If you want to get an accurate assessment of how long your website takes to load, use the PageSpeed Insights tool. This is a tool developed by Google, that’ll allow you to find out the amount of time it takes for a certain page on your site to load. It’ll also tell you what you need to do to speed up the loading time.

2. People Find It Hard Locate Important Information

Another sign you need to consider a redesign is if people find it difficult to find important information on your site. You can generally tell this is the case by asking someone to find a certain piece of information on your website.

This might include your contact information or your opening times, for instance. You can then watch the person go about this task.

If they seem to be clicking around a lot and visiting the same pages over and over it often means it’s hard to find the information you want them to find.

3. Your Website Doesn’t Work on All Devices

Another sign of a website that needs a redesign is a website that doesn’t work on all devices. There aren’t that many people who use just a desktop to visit websites.

Thus if your website only works on a desktop, you’re alienating a lot of the people who use the internet primarily on a smartphone or a tablet computer.

You might experience this if your website uses a lot of ‘Flash’ animation, for example. You’ll generally find that mobile devices aren’t able to load websites that are using a large amount of Flash.

4. Your Website Doesn’t Look Good on a Mobile Device

It’s not enough for your website to be ‘work’ on all devices.

It also needs to look good on all devices. If you only have a desktop version of your site, you need to redesign everything so you have both a desktop and a mobile version.

This will mean that people visiting the site from a mobile device, see a different website to the people visiting from a desktop. This can sound like a lot of trouble, but going through this process is worth it.

There’s also reason to believe that having a mobile version of your site will make it easier for your site to rank in Google search listings.

5. You’ve Updated Your Brand

You might also want to redesign your website if you’ve updated the branding of your business. If your new brand uses a new set of colors you want your website to also reflect this.

In doing so, you’ll be able to create some consistency. This’ll, therefore, help people feel like they’re in the right place when they’re visiting your site. All which can help improve the level of trust people have in your site.

6. You Struggle to Update It

It may be the case that your current website is hard to update. This can be a problem if you need to make updates on a regular basis. You’ll generally find that older websites are built using a classic HTML approach. This means you’ll need to adjust the coding of the site, to adjust the text and update it.

But newer websites might be built on a platform known as WordPress. This platform makes it easy to update the text on your site. If you currently aren’t able to do this, then you might want to redesign your site.

If you’d like some help on how to do this, you might want to reach out to a specialist web design company. This company is a great example of someone that can help you.

7. You Aren’t Able to Integrate Social Media

Social media can be a great way to promote your website. But if your website doesn’t integrate well with social media, social media promotions won’t do you much good.

For instance, your current website might not provide people with the option to share something they like on your site. This can reduce the visibility of your site. To counter this, you’ll need to update your site so that this action can be taken.

8. Competitor Sites Look Better

You may not want to hear it, but people tend to judge a brand by the quality of its website.

If your website does not look as good as competitor websites, this might reflect badly on your brand. You’ll thus want to consider redesigning your site if competitor sites are much better than yours.

9. Traffic is High but Nobody is Taking Action

You may currently notice that a lot of people are visiting your site, but no one is joining your newsletters or reaching out to call you. If this is the case, it could be because they’re not aware they can take such actions.

It might also mean that your website is not optimized for conversions. It may even mean that your website is not impressive, and making people feel like they can’t trust you enough to reach out. In a situation like this, you’ll definitely want to consider how you can redesign your site to address these issues.

If you don’t have access to visitor data on your site, consider installing Google Analytics. This’ll help you review some of the things we’ve just mentioned.

Time to Consider a Website Redesign?

There’s no point spending money on a website redesign if it is not needed. But if your website is being affected by some of the clear warning signs mentioned above, you have to consider making some changes.

You might be worried about the cost of making a redesign. This is a perfectly normal reaction. However, you’ll generally find a redesign doesn’t have to cost a lot of money. Platforms like WordPress make it easy to redesign your website, without forking out a lot of cash. All you need to do is invest in a new theme.

If you want to, you could even hire a freelance web designer. They’ll be able to take of everything for you, without costing you a ton of money. What matters most, though, is that you take action. Provided you make some changes, you should be able to correct the issues currently faced by your website.

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