Having a website or blog designed can be quite a stressful excercise. You have to dig to the roots of your business to write content for your site and you need to work closely with the designer in creating something unique and that works well.
Many hours, a lot of energy and money will be spent getting everything right and eventually comes the time to go live with your site and… Relief!
Loads of business owners go through this process and by the time it’s all over they don’t want to be going through the same thing again any time soon.
Problem is, your website won’t last forever. Even if you got everything spot on and the site works great for your current business, there’s no way you can predict and account for the changes and future of your business. There will come a time that you’re going to have to make changes to your website, simple changes at first maybe, but at some point in time you will have to consider a full redesign.
Here’s a few things to help you decide if it’s time for a change:
Your Site Looks Like It Was Designed in the 90’s
You don’t want your website to look behind the times. Website’s that use frames, have text blocks designed as images instead of HTML, slow loading images or chunky looking navigation buttons and generally crap background images can all be signs that it’s time to re-look your site design. An outdated website can reflect badly on your business, making it look like you don’t really care about keeping it looking modern.
You’re Getting Poor Results in the Major Search Engines
If your site has never been optimized very well then it’s likely to be “Search Engine Unfriendly”. Getting poor results in the major search engines could be the result of bad coding or design choices. Make sure all your text is coded in HTML and most SEO (Search Engine Optimization) experts will tell you that if your site uses frames, that’s the first thing you’ll need to change.
Your Site Navigation Is Very Confusing
If you’ve been adding content to your site over a period of time there’s a chance that your website navigation has become un-friendly and confusing. You want visitors to be able to navigate their way around your site smoothly and without fuss. Maybe you need to re-consider the layout of your site in order to give a simpler navigation and user friendly experience for your visitors.
Every Time You Refer Someone To Your Site You Apologize
You should be proud of your website. You need to be confident when referring potential clients to your website and you don’t want to be apologizing for the bad design, poor navigation, broken links, missing images or anything else. If your site is in top shape then you’ll be confident about referring people to it and that will rub off on your clients allowing you to look more professional.
If your website has any of these problems then it’s definitely worth looking into some changes or a redesign. Keeping your site looking modern and up to date is going to help you pull in some new business and also keep visitors coming back.
If your site uses a wordpress template like mine, you can change it all in a couple of clicks.
But that’s for another post. 😉