10 Reasons to Redesign your Website

We all have those days when we look at our website and think “I’d like a change”. It’s similar to looking at our living room and saying the same thing. Many times we get over it, and the next day we say “What was I thinking? It’s fine!”.

When it comes to your website, though, it may be a good idea to get a second opinion! Even if your site is functioning as it should, your design and graphics could still be holding you back from achieving even greater success!

10. Your site is “misaligned”.  You’ve been adding products and content over the course of months (or years) causing the whole site to become “wonky”. Images and text don’t fit quite right. Text looks like a big run-on sentence in some places. Navigation is wrapping when it shouldn’t.

9. Your code is a jumbled mess.  It becomes more and more difficult with every update to even FIND where to put the content.

8. Your site is graphically “heavy”.  In the new age of Web 2.0, less is more. Sites with cleaner graphics and fewer graphics will load faster and be more appealing to today’s web surfers.

7. Your keywords and meta tags are outdated or don’t exist at all.  Stick to the basics, even if you follow the latest trends it’s good to have basic SEO in place, such as relative keywords, page titles, image tags, and descriptions.

6. Your graphics are fuzzy, dark, or outdated.  Even though less is more, if the graphics you DO have are poor ones, it brings down your whole design. Spend some time and money making sure you have clean, crisp images…and clear and bright product photos. If you’ve redesigned your print logo, make sure your website matches your business cards and print media.

5. Your color scheme is headache inducing.  Colors that used to be popular and eye-catching are now only used to highlight content. Whatever you do, if your main color is bright neon pink or green, make sure it’s appealing to your target market and not over-done.

4. Your content has been the same for years.  Visitors are more likely to keep coming back when they see something refreshing and new on your site. If you have a retail site, add a “Featured Item” to the home page. If you have a content site…move it into the Web 2.0 realm using dynamic content and a matching blog.

3. Your conversion rate is LOW.  Use your analytics to determine where people are leaving your site, and find out why. Maybe it’s those dark product photos, maybe it’s a confusing store policy, maybe it’s a shopping cart that doesn’t match the site (making people think they’ve somehow ended up in the wrong place). Some small improvements can go a long way towards better revenue.

2. Your Navigation is so confusing even an expert can’t find their way.  Simple navigation is “in”. Text navigation is key (not only to SEO). Helpful things in your stylesheet will mean all the difference to a visitor. Do your text links change color once they’ve been visited? Research shows people prefer that sort of thing. Create a site map, so that when or if someone does get lost, there’s a place where they can go to find their way.

1. What’s a Stylesheet?  If you just asked this question, run…don’t walk to the best web designer you can find!