Reasons to Update Your Website

 A good website has the power to turn a small local business into a global brand. Online sales give businesses access to millions of new customers and can transform your small start-up into a competitive thriving company within months. To get this level of success, you need a responsive, attractive website which is designed to be easy to use, quick to find, and great to look at. Professional web designers are experts in knowing what consumers want, understanding the most logical way to navigate the site and making your website look on brand and on point. By choosing a reputable designer you can make sure your website is future-proof and ready to adapt as your business grows.

A new website update and design could be the best decision you make for your business, here’s why:

Secure
Above all e-commerce sites need to be safe and secure for your customers. Web designers can install programmes which make sure any payment or contact information is kept private and prevent your business from facing any breaches of confidentiality. For the past couple of years Google has been flagging any website that doesn’t have a SSL Certificate as being ‘Not Secure’. With SSL certificates, your customers will see visuals like lock icon and green address bar that indicates well-trusted encryption is in use.

Functional
User experience (UX) is a newer discipline of design that’s become increasingly crucial in a website’s success. It deals with the emotional experience a visitor has when navigating through your website and how it aligns with their intentions. Your customers want your website to be easy to navigate with simple menus and an intuitive layout. Clever designers can make sure your website is straightforward to use – helping increase sales and making your customers want to come back to your site again and again.

Looking good
Have you ever been to a site that was almost impossible to use? You wait forever for it to load only to be presented with broken links, outdated offers, and a layout that isn’t optimised for a modern day browser? Not only is it frustrating, it makes you less likely to view that website as being reputable.

When people visit your site, they see it as a reflection of your organisation. If your site looks professional and is loaded with useful information readers will see you as an authority and expert. Likewise, if the site looks poorly designed and structured and/or out-of-date they’ll make the same assumptions about your company. The website should highlight your product and/or service and the layout should look harmonious and consistent.

Has your content got dates on it – blog posts, events and similar? It makes sense to remove or update out of date content. As websites mature and grow, it often becomes apparent that certain parts just aren’t working well anymore and are becoming outdated.

Your website might not be at this level of broken, but areas of your site may be dated and in need of a tune up. For example, maybe you haven’t optimised for the latest browsers, or you’re linking to old pages that no longer exist and were never properly redirected. These issues may seem small, but they play a significant role in the overall effectiveness of your website.

Mobile ready
With more and more e-commerce coming from mobile phones or tablets, it’s important your website is mobile ready. Your site needs to work across all platforms so customers get a quick professional service no matter how they view or log on to your website. Google is now telling searchers whether your website is mobile friendly or not with their new mobile friendly test. This will inevitably affect your credibility, click-through rate, lead generation and sales.

If you haven’t carried out a website update in a long time, the chances are that you may be driving mobile users and potential customers away.

Your website is not optimised for search engines.
If you don’t keep your website updated, it’s sure to fall in the search engine rankings. Search engines regard websites with the most recent content as the most relevant to web users. Your content might be gold but if it’s the same content as it was 5 years ago then search engines crawlers might not think it is as relevant anymore.

The redesign also gives you a chance to rethink your keyword targeting and the overall conversion rate of your website. The way people search and how they search has changed dramatically over the last few years, even truer with the explosion of smartphone devices now in use. A website redesign can help you improve your site architecture so that it is more Search Engine friendly. A website redesign can also help you improve your coding and make your website as a whole more search engine friendly utilising custom page urls, H1, H2, H3 Tags, Page Titles and Alt Tags by utilising a more advanced Content Management System, such as WordPress, that gives you greater flexibility and makes optimising your website easier.

Find out how your business can be transformed and get in touch : 0191 280 2023
email john@bigpurplebox.co.uk