Eight alarming signs your website needs an update
Keep reading to learn eight signs your website needs an update, and how to give customers an incredible first impression of your business.
We all say that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover… but we do it anyway. First impressions matter. Today, the first interaction that a customer has with your business is usually with your website. You need to make that first impression count.
If your website is outdated, hard to navigate, or doesn’t have useful information, your potential customers aren’t going to spend the time on your site to find it. Your competitors are just a click away, and if they can provide information faster, in a more user-friendly way, your potential customers will become theirs.
Let’s do some digital housekeeping and take stock of the current state of your website. Here, we’ll explore eight signs your website needs to be updated. Let’s jump right in!
Key takeaways:
Your site should be:
- Professional and reflect your business’ services
- Fast
- Optimized to show up on Google and other search engine results pages
- Updated regularly
- Secure and using an HTTPS protocol
- Responsive to device and screen size
- Free from broken links
- Clear on what it is offering potential customers or clients
1. Your site’s design is dated
Imagine walking into an interior designer’s office and finding it decked out with dirty shag carpets, beige popcorn ceilings, and wood paneled walls. Are you going to ask them to style your new home? As we established, first impressions matter. The wrong design for your website can turn potential customers off before they even read your landing page’s text.
Your website’s design should reflect industry trends and visually establish your trustworthiness.
2. It takes a long time to load
A long time—meaning a couple seconds. Your site needs to be lightning fast, and if it isn’t Google won’t show it as frequently. Your site could be slow for a number of reasons, ranging from buggy plugins to poorly executed custom code.
Most sites should be pretty fast to begin with, but some may have room for improvement. Talking to an SEO expert can help you identify issues that could be slowing your site down and ultimately impacting how users find you.
3. Your site isn’t optimized for search
What’s the point of having a website for your business if nobody can find it? SEO is no longer a nice-to-have, but a must for modern businesses. SEO accounts for a plethora of factors, both visible and invisible, ranging from your pages’ meta information, structured data, content, URL structure, and much, much more.
If your site isn’t optimized for modern search engines, you’re leaving money on the table and giving your competitors an easy win. Take the time to invest in SEO. While results come slowly, they bring long-term benefits, unlike many other marketing strategies.
4. Your content is older than sliced bread
Recency is exciting and authoritative. It’s why news outlets are so eager to ‘break’ stories. Potential customers want your site to tell them, one way or another, that you’re a dependable, quality business they can trust. But when the last content on your site is from 2014, it sends a different message.
Updating the content on your site regularly signals that you care about your business’ reputation and your customers’ experience. If your site feels like a ghost town, give it some love and let potential customers know you’re ready for them.
5. Your site isn’t mobile responsive
It’s not 1990 anymore—internet access isn’t tied to a gigantic desktop computer. Today, over half of all searches are done on a phone or tablet. Put another way, most searches are done on small screens.
If your site doesn’t display well on those smaller viewports, your site visitors are in for an unpleasant experience. Then again, with Google’s mobile-first indexing, the odds of a user even finding your site aren’t great.
If your site isn’t mobile responsive, it’s a sign that you need a major overhaul—usually an entire new site.
6. Your URL isn’t secure
If your site isn’t operating on an HTTPS, your site users are vulnerable. It’s technical stuff, bordering on the edge of our technical purview, but the short of it is that if your site is only on an HTTP URL, visitors’ information can be intercepted with relative ease.
Besides that, Google and other leading search engines are getting selective. They’ll notify users that a site isn’t safe when it lacks an HTTPS protocol, and because they don’t want to send users to sketchy websites, HTTP pages will almost surely rank lower.
Transferring your site’s URL structure from HTTP protocol to an HTTPS protocol can be a daunting task—but it’s well worth it. If you’re at a loss for where to begin, reach out to an SEO for guidance.
7. You have broken links
If you thought old content sent bad signals to site users, wait till you hear about broken links. Broken links, or links that lead to non-existent pages, are a detriment to user experience and a scarlet letter for your SEO. Broken links essentially broadcast that you haven’t checked your work.
And if you don’t take the time to check your own work, why would a potential customer believe you’d do so for them or their business?
8. Your value proposition is unclear
While it’s obvious to you and your team, the value that you and your business offer your customers or clients isn’t always clear. If your website’s copy doesn’t effectively demonstrate this, users might not make that connection, especially when the choice is between you and a competitor whose site engages visitors, answers questions, and encourages specific actions.
If you don’t give your site some love, can you expect visitors to?
Think of your website like a receptionist who works for you 24/7. You’d want them to be professional, welcome visitors, answer as many questions as possible, and direct your visitors’ next steps. Your website should do that, for both visitors and search engines.
If your site isn’t providing a strong user experience, it’s worth prioritizing. That said, implementing changes that will actually drive results isn’t always easy. Our team can help. If you want to take your site to the next level, start the conversation with our team today.