If you are a small business owner, these days you know you can’t move forward without a proper website. It’s likely that no one needs to convince you that you need an online presence to survive in the business world. It’s also likely that you already have a website for your brand or company.
That’s great!
Now, it’s time to decide if your website could use a refresh. Just like a physical store, your website needs constant care, maintenance and upgrades. Fonts go out of style, content gets outdated and user preferences are always evolving. There’s the constant battle with Google to get good search rankings and keep customers clinging onto your pages.
Likely if you have a well put together website, you just need an occasional refresh to make it appear cleaner and remain up to date. Here are the top 5 signs it’s time to update your website:
1. Content is outdated
If you remember back to the early stages of building and planning your website, you might recall needing a ton of content written. Many business owners barely glance again at a lot of the content once it was posted. This is an easy area to refresh and update. If your website has a lot of pages, consider slowly reading over each section to decide if the content is current or needs a little reviving.
Always consider if the content still fits the tone of your company. Sometimes the voice of your company or brand has evolved, and the language within your content needs to reflect that change. You may even consider hiring a content writer to address these areas if it seems overwhelming. However, you must be sure that your brand matches your content or your customers might get confused.
2. It’s not mobile friendly
It’s easy to forget the mobile user when it comes to your website. This is an area that must be done better as many more people are browsing the web on their mobile device. A user’s experience on your site can definitely make or break your business. You can be missing out on a lot of sales.
Google definitely gives more points to sites that are mobile friendly (remember mobilegeddon?) It’s really a no-brainer to make your website easier to navigate on a mobile device.
3. It’s sloooooow
You could easily be losing customers before your page even loads. Kissmetrics found that if your company’s page takes longer than 3 seconds to load, then 40% of people will bounce. That’s right, they will not stick around to see if your page will load. That’s huge!
Loading times not only hurt your customers, but they also hinder that darn Google search ranking you’re so desperately working so hard at. You want your customers to enjoy your website and stick around for awhile. They will only hang out if the page loads quickly.
4. It’s in Flash
As if you need yet another ranking hindrance, if your website is so outdated that it still uses Adobe Flash, then I’m here to tell you that Google and other search engines will not index your website, leading to poor search rankings.
Adobe Flash was once all the rage. Developers could use Flash to make super amazing vector graphics and animations. They still can, but they won’t be supported on many devices.
Apple products like the iPhone and iPad do not support Flash. Users also need a plugin installed to use it anyway. At this point, there’s no advantage in using Flash.
If you do nothing else to refresh your website, at the very least update it so that it no longer uses Flash.
5. You’re sick of it
It is totally reasonable for you to hate your own website. Maybe you’re tired of the color, the font or the pictures are old and outdated. Maybe it is difficult to navigate. Maybe you’ve heard someone mutter some unfortunate adjectives describing your site. That’s ok! If you don’t love your own website, then chances are, many other people are not in love either.
Take the time to write down everything that you do not like about your website. Check with other people to see if they are finding the same things bothersome. It just might be time for a big refresh project. Many business owners are truly happy once they refresh and make the proper updates. Don’t be embarrassed to give out your company’s website URL.
Final Thoughts
There’s a millions reasons to refresh your brand or company’s website. You want to be proud to share your URL and keep customers engaged with your site. All websites evolve and it’s likely that it is time for you to change it up a little. You can refresh it in small ways like making it more mobile friendly or completely updating the content and colors. Either way, it is time to be happy with your website.