In the modern, connected age a corporate website has become a prerequisite in every company’s marketing and promotions arsenal – a steadfast communication tool for reaching out to clients (new and existing) and extolling your firm’s virtues, skills, products and service and for the best data integration system look no further.
In truth, your website is your company’s window on the world – or, perhaps more importantly, the world’s window to you. These days, it’s estimated around 71% of all consumer journeys start with an online search – meaning, for the vast majority of clients, their first impression of your firm is your website. Consequently, this is most certainly not an area you can afford to take chances.
The importance of a well-designed, optimized, easy-to-use website
Exact figures vary but it’s estimated that the average user will spend between three to ten seconds skimming a website searching for what they’re looking for before they click back – most likely never to return.
The saying, “First impressions count” is perhaps nowhere more applicable than in the online world and in our fast-paced, impatient culture you only get one shot at grabbing a customer’s attention and reeling them in. If you’re in any doubt about the efficacy of your site as a selling tool, you should look to engaging the skills of a professional marketing firm like Flyrise who will perform a full audit of your website and advise you on areas for improvement. Meanwhile, below are some simple checks you could make yourself that might suggest you need your website redesigned:
Pages load painfully slowly: One of the most common problems with older sites is their ridiculously slow loading times. Not only will slow pages alienate users, you’ll also perform badly in search engines. Google accounts for around 87% of all search traffic and the engine now penalizes slow-loading sites by putting them further down the rankings – resulting in less traffic.
Your site looks old: You’re not just a website owner – you’re also a website user – which inevitably means you know what looks good, even if you don’t particularly realize why. You don’t need specialist design skills or prowess to recognize when something looks dated – particularly when it comes to web design. If your site is using tiny fonts, slow graphics, animated gifs, flashing text, multiple different fonts, etc. it’s a sign that it’s old and needs a redesign.
Your site doesn’t work well on mobile devices: Mobile devices now account for over 50% of all web usage, so if your site doesn’t work well on smaller handhelds by utilizing something called Responsive Design, you could be missing out on leads and sales. Also, Google now penalizes non-responsive websites, again putting them further down the search result listings.
You can’t make changes to your website independently: Modern websites are built using Content Management Systems (CMS), which empower the owner to make changes independently of their design company/programmer. If your site doesn’t have this function, it’s a sure sign you need to consider getting it redesigned to adhere to more up-to-date standards.
Your site is more than five years old: Many designers would argue three years rather than five but, regardless, if your site hasn’t been updated in a while, it would likely benefit considerably from a redesign. Coding technologies are constantly improving and design trends change regularly meaning your site won’t look as clean and fresh as your competitors – and probably won’t perform as welleither.
