When Do You Need to Update Your Creative Web Design?
You wouldn’t forget to update your shop window for 4 years. As your digital shopfront, updating your creative web design is crucial to the success of your business. To rank highly on search engines, it’s no longer just enough to create a good design and stick with it; the goal posts for best practice and high quality are always moving – you have to move with technology and the changing trends to remain successful.
Your website is where potential customers will naturally go to find out what you do, view your products or service information and, where relevant, even make a purchase. Therefore, your creative web design plays a major role in helping to influence your customers’ perception and their purchasing decisions.
Here’s how to know if it’s time to update your creative web design:
Your design is dated
There’s no questioning that design really does impact sales. A poorly designed website can deter customers from making a purchase, particularly if navigating around the site is clunky and not user friendly. A dated site can make your brand appear uncredible and unprofessional. Design trends are always changing, usually to keep up with rapidly changing customer expectations such as new/higher standards for experience, so what was popular 5 years ago is no longer effective. Keep your creative web design looking modern and fresh with menu updates, customer journey/UX (user experience) review, new images, video and up to date SEO content.
Your website design is not mobile friendly, or mobile optimised
With 51.8% of web traffic coming via mobile devices*, it’s key that your web design should be mobile friendly. In addition, this year Google changed its algorithm so mobile-friendly sites are always ranked above non-mobile friendly sites no matter the device being used to search. If you haven’t looked at whether your design (and site build) provides for a good mobile experience, you could miss out on attracting new customers.
Mobile optimisation takes ‘friendliness’ one step further (no, not like that). It takes into account the quality, performance and user experience of your site when using a mobile device. It’s about creating a web design that is responsive; which automatically adjusts to fit different screens, resolutions and orientations, whilst still providing an excellent user experience and an easy to follow user journey.
Your website loads too slowly
Due to Google’s recent drastic algorithm change, it’s important to check the loading speed of your mobile site, as well as your desktop site. 53% of mobile users leave a site if it takes longer than three seconds to load, and Google is now penalising sites to reflect this, so your design needs to take loading speeds into account. Remember, the busier your web design is, the longer it’ll take to load. Click here to find out your site’s current loading speed.
Your content is out of date
If your current web design doesn’t enable you to easily change your content without learning how to code, then you should consider updating it. Updating content regularly boosts your search rankings and helps you to stay relevant in the minds of your audience. The easiest way to manage this on an ongoing basis it to ensure your site has a user-friendly CMS or content management system available to log into. If you have to seek outside support to make just minor changes to the copy, design or even just to upload an image, you might want to consider moving to a e user-friendly platform for greater control of your creative web design.
It doesn’t integrate with your marketing
It’s your website’s job to tell visitors what you do and the benefits you offer, and then propel them further down your marketing funnel to get them to act (and maybe even buy). A modern website will need to integrate with your CRM or email marketing tools to make the marketing process seamless. It might also need to integrate with membership platforms, ecommerce backend systems, payment systems… the list is endless. If your website restricts the way you want to market and drive sales, then it’s time for a change.
When do you need to update your creative web design? The answer is simple: as soon as it stops performing the way you need it to. Don’t put up with a site that doesn’t deliver.
For more helpful advice on updating your web design, why not call our creative team for a no obligation chat on 01462 262020, or simply email us at hello@focus7int.com.
