Spring has sprung and that always signifies new life and fresh starts. For business owners, spring is a great time to have a look at your website to see if it needs new life breathed into it. Even if your website was just revamped recently, that doesn’t mean it is exempt from getting attention.
We are often asked, “How do you know if I need a quick update or a whole new website”? Let’s break it down and look at the options that best suit your individual business needs so that your website looks and performs its best … all the time.
Top 5 motives to update your site:
If your site is reasonably new and has great look and feel to it as well as solid functionality, you may just need a website refresh. A refresh or update is more economical than a complete redesign and can often be completed fairly quickly. Here are the most compelling reasons to update your site:
- User experiences & responsiveness
Make sure your users get the absolute best experience when they visit your site. This means the right amount of scrolling, easy navigation, accessibility, and above all, a great looking mobile version of your website. These days, over 70% of people look up a company from their phones, so your site must impress them with mobile responsiveness right from the start.
- Logo & image updates
If you recently changed up your branding and logo or want to update the images/photography on your website, a refresh will do the trick. This is also a convenient time to update the team/staff photos and bios.
- Change in services, products or promotions
A lot can change over the course of a few days, weeks or months (just think how Covid changed businesses overnight!). If you’ve made any modifications to your business services, hours, products, sales and so on, ensure your website reflects those changes. Even if you are posting updates to your social media accounts, if your website is inaccurate, it looks bad on your brand. Got outdated content? Now is the time to get rid of it.
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
Getting ranked higher in search engines algorithms like Google takes some effort. To continue climbing the list, it’s important to adapt your SEO and optimization practices – which a good old refresh can accomplish. This includes your website’s speed and how long it takes each page to load. The slower the page, the lower the ranking.
- Spam
Hackers continue to find ways to gain access to websites – particularly through forms (email) and comments. Tighten up that website security when you do your next refresh so that you block out spammers and have more time to deal with your real customers.
Spring into action
As you can see, a website refresh and occasional updates are needed to keep your site performing its best while continuing to give your audience the information – and user experience – it deserves.
In many cases, a website can remain quite functional and enjoyable for years with regular updates, even with ever-changing technology. However, when a site is too far gone or too outdated, it’s important to be open to starting over with a whole new revamp. Think of it like you would a car. Regular maintenance and updates can prolong the life, but if it’s a lemon that just can’t get you where you need to go, it’s time for a new one.
If you are still not sure if this is the right time for a website ‘spring clean’ connect with the web design and development team at Element 6. We’ll tell it to you straight – and give you exactly what you need without the scary up-sale. We live and breathe all things websites; you’d be surprised at what we can fix. Connect today, we look forward to working with you.