Whether your website is a few years old or just a few months, it’s important to check in with its performance. At some point (ideally at the beginning), you designed your website with the purpose of generating leads and sales. If it’s not doing that anymore, it’s time to redesign or just create a new web design! But don’t worry: if you’ve been using the same design since day one, redesigning won’t be as intimidating as it could be. In fact, by now you probably have a good sense of what works and what doesn’t—so let’s dive right into this article and figure out where we should start our redesign project together!
What is working and what isn’t?
The first step in determining whether it’s time to redesign your website is to look at what is working, and what isn’t. It’s important that you know why people are visiting your site and how they’re using it in order to make sure that the changes you make will be effective. Here are some things that can help:
- Are there clear calls to action? Are there products or services on the pages (and do they match the focus of your business)?
- Is the navigation intuitive? Does it lead users through easily understood paths toward their goal(s)?
- Do all content types work well together visually (elements of text, graphics, etc.)?
- Is the website engaging?
Is it easy to update?
When it comes to updating your website, there are a lot of ways that you can go wrong. If you’re not careful, you could end up with an outdated design and content management system that makes it difficult for visitors to understand what’s new on the site. In order to ensure that your website is easy-to-update and engaging for users, here are some tips:
- Make sure you have a content management system (CMS). A CMS allows people who aren’t specialists in computer programming or design to make changes easily by using templates or wizard tools instead of having them learn how HTML works from scratch.
- Use good developers who know SEO best practices—and even better designers who understand how search engine algorithms work so they can optimize their pages while they create them!
Does it still look good on all devices?
Does your website look good on all devices? You can test this by using a program called WebPageTest. This will give you an idea of how well your site performs when viewed on different kinds of devices, such as smartphones, tablets, and computers. If you have an iPhone 5 or newer device, try to view the page on that particular model at http://www.webpagetest.org/2/index_desktop_mobile/.
If you see the page load slowly or not at all, then your site is not optimized for mobile devices. This can be fixed by your website designer or SEO team by making some changes to your HTML code. Since 60% of all searches are now done on smartphones, it is crucial to have a mobile-friendly website.
Is your website still generating leads or sales?
You might be wondering, “How do I measure website performance?” or “Is my website generating leads or sales?” The answer is simple: you need to know what metrics are important for the goals of your business.
You can measure lead generation with Google Analytics and conversion rate by using UTM parameters in AdWords. Both metrics give you insights into how well your online marketing efforts are working, but they don’t help with making decisions about redesigning or rebranding.
So how do you measure website performance for those goals? Here’s what we recommend:
- Use Google Analytics to track conversions and goals.
- Use UTM parameters in AdWords to measure which channels are working and which aren’t.
- Use a heatmap tool to see what areas of the page are being clicked and how people are interacting with it.
- Ask your customers directly by setting up an email survey through a service like SurveyMonkey or Qualaroo.
- Ask your employees, partners, and vendors what they think of the website.
- Test out different designs by using a tool like Usability Hub or Inspectlet.
- Use a tool like CrazyEgg or ClickTale to see where people are clicking on the page and which areas are the most popular (or not).
Are you on the first page of Google yet?
Google is the most popular search engine in the world. In fact, it’s so popular that it’s become a verb: people don’t Google things—they “google” them. And for good reason: Google has data and influence on an unprecedented scale. This means that the website you’re designing should be optimized for all kinds of searches, including those that your visitors may not have thought to enter into their browsers before visiting your site.
That’s why, when you’re designing a website, it’s important to consider how Google will crawl and index your content. You want to ensure that Google can easily find all of the important information on your pages. This will help your site rank higher in search results—and it’ll also make sure that people who are searching for specific topics can find what they’re looking for.
How do you do this? By making sure that your site is search engine friendly. In this post, we’ll take a look at some of the basics of SEO and show you how to make your website more accessible to Google’s bots.
What Is SEO?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving your website’s visibility in search engines so that it ranks higher for relevant terms. This includes making sure your site is easily crawlable by Google’s bots, which automatically find and index websites on the internet. Your goal should be to make it as easy as possible for Google’s bots to quickly and accurately index all of the content on your pages—this way, when someone searches for something related to what you offer, yours will be one of the first results that pop up.
SEO can be broken down into two main categories: on-page SEO and off-page SEO. On-page SEO refers to the things you do on your website that help improves its visibility in search engines. This includes things like making sure your site is well-optimized for mobile devices and using schema markup (more on that later). Off-page SEO refers to external factors like backlinks, social media signals, and citations from other sites.
For example, if you’re a freelance writer, optimizing your site for SEO can help people find you when they search for “freelance writers” on Google. This is because Google uses data from other websites—including backlinks and social media signals—to determine which results to display first.
Great web design doesn’t get outdated quickly. However, if you are seeing a decline in conversions, it may be time to redesign your website.
If your site is not performing well, it may be time to redesign it. A great website doesn’t get outdated quickly. However, if you are seeing a decline in conversions and visits then it may be time to redesign your website.
If you have an outdated site that isn’t easy to update or maintain then this will also cause problems for the company over time because they won’t want to spend money on updating the site every year when they could just spend that money elsewhere instead (like buying more advertising).
Conclusion
If your website isn’t generating leads or sales, it may be time to redesign. It might not be the only thing that needs to change, but it will definitely give you an opportunity to improve your online presence and make sure that you are showing up on Google’s 1st page results! Never forget your goals, your online presence will help you get there.
Located in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Blue Rhino Agency is your trusted source for website design and a wide range of digital marketing services. Contact us today by calling 954-779-6866 to learn more about how we can help you achieve your marketing goals.
