HOW OFTEN SHOULD YOU REDESIGN YOUR WEBSITE?
The answer to this question varies by business, but it’s generally recommended for small and medium-sized enterprises to redesign every 2 or 3 years. This allows you to adapt your website to your users’ needs, and to keep up with the latest technology and trends.
This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t update at all before this time passes. It’s still good to launch a minor design update every year just to ensure you’re supporting the latest devices and technologies.
However, this 2–3 year rule applies only to the websites that are functioning well, and certainly doesn’t apply to every situation. Luckily, there are some factors that indicate when a website should be redesigned as soon as possible, even if 2 or 3 years haven’t passed yet.
5 REASONS TO REDESIGN YOUR WEBSITE RIGHT NOW
IT ISN’T MOBILE OPTIMISED
Last year, there were 237 million mobile internet users in the US alone. This number is estimated to increase to 257 million by 2022. This means that most of your audience views your website on their smartphones from time to time—and some of them view it on their smartphones exclusively.
Therefore, if you didn’t optimise your website for mobile view, you have to do this as soon as you can. If you want both your sales and your website rankings to grow steadily, you need to make sure that viewing your site on smartphones is just as convenient as viewing it on a desktop.
IT ISN’T OPTIMISED FOR SEARCH ENGINES
When you’re looking for something online, how often do you go past the first page of Google search results? Most people don’t ever stray past the first page, and that’s why you need to invest time and effort into building and maintaining your search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy.
Website design plays a considerable role in any SEO strategy. If you want to improve your website ranking, you need to start with your design: Make it organised, appealing, and easy to understand.
IT’S HARD TO NAVIGATE
Website navigation doesn’t merely help users view your site and the products or services you offer; it also guides them through every step of purchase, if they decide to make one. If navigation isn’t convenient and easy to understand, this could lead to a drop in sales. Users could struggle to find what they’re looking for and go to your competitors instead.
Therefore, you need to ensure that your website is easy to navigate—if it isn’t, it’s time to redesign.
IT DOESN’T LOOK VISUALLY APPEALING
People still judge a book by its cover—and a website by its design. The design could make your business look serious or friendly, modern or retro, and so on. It could also affect sales; if a site isn’t appealing or looks cheap, your visitors probably won’t become your customers.
Aesthetics are only one facet of website design, but for many people, how sleek or intuitive your site is will make a huge difference in whether they become return or even first-time customers.
YOU’VE CHANGED BRANDING
Rebranding or slight changes in branding happen in most businesses. If you change something, be it a new logo or a whole brand identity, you also need to make sure that your website represents that as well, preferably right after the rebranding happened. It could look odd to use a new logo everywhere except your own site.
WHEN IS IT TIME TO REDO OR RESHAPE CONTENT?
You need to update website content regularly for the following reasons:
- To demonstrate that your business/content is active and evergreen
- To build better communication with your audience
- To increase audience trust by sharing your knowledge
- To look more honest and trustworthy through consistency
- To attract new customers
- To boost SEO and improve rankings
However, what about existing content? Should you leave it be or should you redo it from time to time? How often do you need to redo and reshape your content without looking spammy? Let’s figure this out.
WHEN YOU CAN ADD FRESH DATA
Imagine you’ve published an excellent report that offers a lot of statistics and valuable insights. Such things often boost traffic and get lots of shares, however, they could quickly become outdated and therefore less relevant.
You can add new data to the report when appropriate (once a year, once every six months, etc.), and use it as an opportunity to reshape your content.
WHEN SOMETHING CHANGES
Detailed guides drive a lot of traffic as well, and people turn to them often. However, you can still come up with things to make them more relevant and reshape them as well. For instance, if such guide is software-related, add tips for the newest software updates, come up with recent examples that are based on the latest trends, and so on. This also includes rewriting the guides partially or entirely when some aspects become irrelevant and/or out of date.
WHEN IT BECOMES RELEVANT AGAIN
Let’s take Game of Thrones as an example. So many businesses launched special events and created new content to correspond with the release of each new season. This was also an opportunity for them to attract attention to old content pieces, to update guides, studies, etc.
Such opportunities don’t happen often, however, they can usually be planned around. Keep these opportunities in mind, and seize them when appropriate to bring your audience back to older content once more.
Market competition is fierce, but you shouldn’t fear it as long as you stay up-to-date. We hope this article helped you understand how and when to redesign your website, so you can always remain relevant and interesting to your audience.
