Modern websites are an ever-changing entity. Most sites these days are built in some sort of dynamic platform that allows them to grow as they age. However, age they do. Website trends in design and functionality are constantly changing and evolving. New technologies come along that offer a better user experience or add capabilities to the site structure.
Therefore, periodically, it is a good idea to have your website audited to ensure that it is working at 100% of its capacity.
While most of our clients are signed up for one of our site maintenance plans, this only goes so far. Sure, the website is kept running and secure with all the site core and plugins updated and monitored, but this does not account for the new options or keeping the site looking “fresh” and modern.
Depending on your industry, size of your business, and amount of competition in your field, you may need to redesign your site more or less often. Large businesses with lots of competition may need to redesign their sites every two years or so. Smaller companies can probably hold off for 3+ years depending on the circumstance. Beyond that, even the smallest of sites will look totally outdated and lack the features that visitors expect.
There are definite trends in website design and functionality and site visitors are fickle and expecting more and more. Is your site ready?
Here is a list of some of the factors that make your site need to be updated. This is not all-encompassing, but you get the idea.
• Your company has grown considerably.
• Your business structure has changed.
• You Have rebranded your company.
• Your industry has evolved in some way.
• Your site has broken links or missing images.
• Your site’s design looks outdated compared to modern sites.
• Your site is hard to navigate or find important information.
• Your site is not utilizing current features such as parallax, responsive design, etc.
• Your site takes too long to load.
• Your site has had little, or no on-page Search Engine Optimization (SEO) done.
• The leads generated from your site have dropped.
• Your site looks bad on mobile devices (tablets and phones).
Some of these issues can be remedied through a simple facelift, but some may require a complete overhaul. A lot of this will depend on factors such as the platform your site is built upon, the page builder or theme used as a foundation, or even the quality of your web hosting company (where the site files live).
If it has been a while since your site was updated, you may want to have us do a site audit for you. This is free for our maintenance plan customers, but there is a small fee (depending on the site) for others. However, any fee incurred will be applied to the cost of redesign, if you choose to go that route.
If you are interested in getting us to do a site audit for you, contact us today for more information.
