Your Site Looks Outdated or Unprofessional

If your site looks like it was designed a long time ago, people will notice. Research has shown that users usually form an opinion about a website in their first three seconds on the site. If your website fails to make a good first impression, users will most likely move on. In web design, it’s important to realize technology changes fast. Does it fill a new computer screen? Are the graphics professional? If it uses some kind of clip art, it does not look professional.

A failure to update your website with technology that users expect will have a negative impact on your site. As a rule, you should complete a redesign on your website at least once every three years.

Having a well designed website is crucial to your business today for both customers and the search engines. So taking stock of your current offering and seeing if you need a website redesign is a good idea.

Your Site is not Mobile Ready

Mobile ready websites are a must. People who surf the web on tablets or phones need to be able to see your website easily. Mobile internet usage has overtaken desktop internet usage.

If your business does not have a mobile website you are losing out to your competition.

And Google will penalize your site in the rankings if it is not mobile optimized,

Your Website Has Low Conversions

If your website is getting traffic, but you have low conversions, you need to redesign your site. When approaching this problem, you need to consider whom your target audience is. You also have to make sure your content excites your target audience. Making sure you are reaching the right people, and that your site is easy to use will help you increase your conversion ratio.

You Can’t Track Website Activity and Visitors

The key to understanding your websites strengths and weaknesses is knowing what visitors are doing when they find your site. Are they immediately clicking away, or are they digging into your blogs? How long are visitors staying on your page? What are your site clicks versus your sales? This is all vital information. However, if you can’t track this information, you won’t know where to begin fixing problems. Instead of ignoring your site visitors, make sure you understand them.

Your Website Isn’t User Friendly

The bottom line is if visitors to your website can’t get almost immediate gratification from your website, they are going to move on. For this reason, it is critical that your website be both responsive and user friendly. You also can’t design a website, and expect visitors to spend a great deal of time learning how to navigate the website. Instead, everything should be pretty self explanatory, and easy for any visitor to use.

The site doesn’t ask viewers to do something.

If you’re selling a product, you need to ask your viewers to click a link to buy the product. If you’re selling a service, you need to ask your viewers to submit a form and contact you to get a free quote (or whatever).

And you need to spell it out for your viewers.

This doesn’t mean that your site’s content should consist entirely of one link that says “Click here to buy now”. However, that link should be on your site somewhere, and the rest of the site should lead to it.

Site is Full of Broken Links

If your site is full of old coding, cluttered design or broken links, users will get little to no use out of your site. Usually, as soon as a user finds a link that doesn’t work, they will likely leave the site in search of a more friendly, reliable site.

Your Site Takes Too Long to Load

In addition to being user friendly, your site also can’t take too long to load. If your site does take a long time to load, you will lose visitors, and more importantly sales. However, a slow loading site is easy to correct with a website redesign.

Your Website is Hard to Update

Being able to update your website easily is the key to keeping it fresh. If your current website is hard to update, you should probably consider a redesign. With a redesigned site, you can make your website easier to update, which means it will save you time, money, and help you keep the site fresh.

The information on the site is obviously dated.

If you go to a website that’s still promoting a series of events that happened last year, how much will you trust the rest of the information on that site?

Obviously, it’s time for a change. You can either make the change yourself if you know HTML, or hire a web designer.

The site is down or can’t be found.

If your site can’t be found by anyone, what good’s it doing you? If the problem is that your site is constantly down, consider a new hosting service.

If the problem isn’t of a technical nature, then website marketing including search engine optimization and directory submissions can do wonders. So can links to your site from other sites. And don’t forget classifieds, postcards, and email.