it’s important to understand and acknowledge the critical role your website plays in your customer acquisition efforts and the overall impact that it has on sales and revenue. Every point of contact with a potential customer must be in sync for marketing to be effective. One of those points includes your website, which should be your number one salesperson. Just as you need to train and invest in your salespeople year after year, you need to measure your site’s performance over time and make any necessary changes and updates to ensure it continues to successfully convert visitors.

Websites are not meant to last forever. According to research, the average lifespan of a website is 2 years and 7 months. However, not all websites are created equal, and this timeline is really just a guideline. Your websites duration depends on your industry, company growth, your competitors, and is unique to your business.  With so much ambiguity around the right time for an update it can be hard to decide when to pull the trigger.  In this article we will take a look at some of the most critical signs that change is needed to give you a clear idea on when to redesign your website.

It’s not optimized for SEO:

If your website isn’t ranking well on search engines, chances are your competitor’ website is. While standard SEO tactics like pushing keyword-rich content to the site is important, it is only half the battle. If your site is not optimized technically for search engines, all your hard work will be wasted. Perhaps your website was built utilizing a template or your URLs are dynamic, these are structural issues of your site that can lower your ranking, no matter how strong your marketing efforts are. In order for your website to move up in the search results, you must perform on-page search engine optimization (SEO) across your site. This could include improvements to your coding and make your website as a whole more SEO friendly utilizing custom page urls, H1, H2, H3 Tags, Page Titles, and Alt Tags by utilizing a more advanced Content Management System that gives you greater flexibility and makes optimizing your website easier. improve your site architecture so that it is more SEO friendly makes it easy for search engines to crawl and index your website pages, so your keyword-rich content actually shows up in search results. This in turn improves the quality and quantity of your website traffic—ultimately leading to more site visitors and allowing your business to achieve a higher search engine ranking. So, if your search results are less than desired, it could be time to revamp your website.

You have a high bounce rate:

Google defines a bounce rate as a “the percentage of all sessions on your site in which users viewed only a single page and triggered only a single request to the Analytics server.” So essentially it is the calculation of how many viewers only viewed a single page on your site. According to insights gathered by Semrush, A bounce rate of 56% to 70% is on the high side, and 41% to 55% would be considered an average bounce rate and an optimal bounce rate would be in the 26% to 40% range. There are many reasons for having a high bounce rate, and its impact on your overall marketing strategy varies by your industry and the purpose of each page. A high bounce rate could stem from technical SEO issue such as such as your page load time is too slow, poor UX design, unclear content, or an issue with the sites overall structure. If your site has a high bounce rate take notice and think about the effect that each page has on your marketing funnel. A high bounce rate often means a low conversion rate, so redesigning your website may be just the solution you need in order to keep users right where you want them.

Your site is difficult to navigate:

Users want their information as easily and as quickly as possible. If they can’t find what they are looking for on your site within the first 60 seconds, then they move on to the next. Navigation can affect nearly every aspect of your website’s performance—from its search engine ranking and bounce rate to the overall user experience. When a user visits your website, they should be able to find specific pieces of content as easily as possible, which sounds simple enough however you’d be surprised by the number of websites that miss the mark in execution. A well-designed website will lead users through your website in an order that aligns with your user journey strategy. Having a disconnect on any level can lead to confusion, frustration, and website abandonment. This often leads to an increase in bounce rates and decrease in sales and returning visitors. Even a site that began with a strong foundation can find itself struggling with navigation. As a company grows and evolves, so does the information they have to share with their current and potential customers and the site can become overcrowded. As the company grows the website now hosts hundreds of blogs, videos, and insights that users must sort through, and the drop-down menu’s length rivals a grocery list making it difficult for the visitor to follow a logical course of action. When going to long without a website redesign it can become too congested and loses the original visual hierarchy, navigation flow and speed it once had.  A common band-aid solution is to continually reformat and add on to the existing website but to make an impact you need a website redesign.

Your site is not adaptive:

As technology evolves, consumers are reacting to the latest technology by shifting their user preferences. In order to stay competitive in the midst of the digital transformation, it’s critical that brands tailor their content to the new digital trends. Today, it’s not enough to have a mobile-friendly website, it needs to be responsive to all types of browsers and devices through adaptive design. Over half of websites worldwide are now accessed from a desktop, laptop, tablet or many variations of mobile devices and users expect a seamless experience from all of these access points. It’s true that the majority of online traffic stems from mobile, but desktop is still a close second, and a responsive design will help you get the best of both worlds. It maintains the integrity of your website content but adapts it to the specifics of different devices, all the while making it more user-friendly. A responsive web design is defined as a setup where the server always sends the same HTML code to all devices and CSS is used to alter the rendering of the page on the device, meaning a single website can adjust to any screen size. This update will keep your ranking high on search engines and your customers site visitors happy from all their favorite devices.

It is not ADA compliant:

Although improving website accessibility is known to promote new business, many companies are still hesitant to make the change. But with updated website regulations just on the horizon, now more than ever it’s crucial to ensure your website is compliant. The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that they are working to further specify the regulations regarding website accessibility with the intent to enact ADA compliance regulations on a state and local government level. 19% of the US population has some form of a disability, which means that if your website is not accessible, you're not only breaking the law, you’re also missing out on a large number of potential customers. The most fundamental reason you should care about this issue is because every human deserves an equal opportunity to explore the internet without hindrance, and from a business perspective, ignoring accessibility on your website means shutting out 19% of potential customers. To learn more about ADA website compliance laws , what it is, and how to implement them take a look at our eBook, "Accessibility in Web Design: What It Is and How to Implement It!".  A website redesign with a talented team can create an aesthetically beautiful website that works for everyone leading to economic benefits, avoiding potential litigation issues, and an overall happier customer experience.

If you are struggling with any of the above, it’s time to start thinking about a website redesign. Although the task can seem daunting, working with the right team can be a seamless experience that delivers powerful results. For information on the key steps to a successful website redesign take a look at our comprehensive guide, The Ultimate Guide to Web Design Best Practices. We'll walk you through every aspect of the redesign process - from strategy to technology - to ensure your new website is fully optimized to generate revenue.