When it comes to your business, having a functional, user-friendly website is essential for providing the ultimate customer experience.
There may come a time when you’re thinking you need a new website whether it’s outdated, has a poor design or is complicated to navigate.
In this article, we’re going to cover the top signs that indicate it’s time to get a new website so you can streamline the online user experience and enhance your brand’s perceived image.
16 signs you need a new website
- Poor experience / Non-responsive design
- Unclear brand messaging
- Confusing navigation
- Lack of video on website
- No clear digital strategy
- Outdated website design
- Search engines aren’t ranking your website
- Difficult to manage content
- Poor conversion rate
- Slow load times
- Site has bugging issues on different browsers
- Website needs functionality updates
- Website isn’t mobile friendly
- High bounce rate
- Website isn’t branded consistently
- Not aesthetically pleasing
1. Poor experience / Non-responsive design
Today’s consumers have more expectations than ever before. 73% of companies with above-average customer experience perform better financially than their competitors.
If your website provides a poor experience or is non-responsive (slow load times, scripting errors), it may be time to reinvest in a better website design to improve functionality, so you don’t lose customers to the competition.
Meeting consumer expectations should be every company’s #1 priority if you want to make sales and leave a lasting impression on your target audiences.
Improving your website’s overall responsiveness helps search engines rank your website higher on search pages relevant to your business and provides online shoppers with a seamless, convenient user experience.
2. Unclear brand messaging
The messaging on your website needs to clearly convey who your brand is and what it offers.
If the messaging on your website isn’t clear to consumers, they can easily get confused and go to your competitors’ websites.
Consistent, strong brand messaging is the backbone of every successful business website.
Investing in new website grants you the opportunity to start from scratch and clearly define your brand’s voice, messaging, and persona.
3. Confusing navigation
The last thing you want your website to do is to confuse your customers.
If your navigation is clunky and difficult to navigate, consumers can get turned off and bounce from your website out of frustration.
A successful website needs to be cohesive and simple, so your customers do not have to feel like they’re navigating a maze to locate a certain product, service or page.
Investing in a more cohesive, simple website design can improve your site’s metrics tenfold and encourage consumers to spend more time on your site.
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
4. Lack of video on website
90% of consumers claim a video will help them when making a purchasing decision.
Video is the modern version of storytelling, outranking pictures and text posts by a landslide.
Consumers want visually pleasing and informative videos to better understand what your business is selling and the benefits of purchasing from your company.
Adding videos to your website and product offerings is a useful tool your customers will appreciate and rely on when making purchasing decisions.
Photo by Angela Compagnone on Unsplash
5. No clear digital strategy
When it comes to your website, you need to ensure that all of your channels are connected to your website to push sales and brand awareness.
Within your strategy, you need email campaigns where users can sign up from your website to receive promotional codes or insider information.
Additionally, to learn more about your brand, links to your social media where they can follow your brand and be the first to know about company updates and sales; content marketing such as a website blog that provides your customers with industry-relevant information; and cohesive web design that reinforces your brand’s superior image.
A digital strategy is what guarantees success because your customer is engaged at all touchpoints, not just with your website.
If your website is lacking direct access to all of your channels (blog, emails, socials), then you’ll need to redesign your website to connect to all of your touchpoints to increase recognition.
Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash
6. Outdated website design
38% of people will stop engaging with a website if the content/layout is unattractive.
Being innovative and providing new, exciting online experiences is how you can set yourself apart from the rest of the competition.
If your competitors have more attractive, modern websites, your target audiences are more likely to visit their websites and purchase from them.
To avoid this, it’s critical to invest in your website’s appearance and study up on today’s website trends.
7. Search engines aren’t ranking your website
One indication that you need a new website or revamping is if your website isn’t ranking with search engines such as Google.
The number one way to rank high in search engines is to optimise the SEO of your website, and if your web pages, blog, and products aren’t taking advantage of optimising keywords then it’s highly likely your website isn’t performing well.
A new website will allow you and your team to start over and carefully choose which keywords are performing well and align with your brand’s content and product offerings, ultimately helping you rank higher with search engines.
Photo by Myriam Jessier on Unsplash
8. Difficult to manage content
If you’re having a difficult time updating or adding content to your website, you may be working with a complex, outdated and/or bespoke CMS (content management system) that no longer meets your business needs.
You may find it difficult to manage and update website contents or find that bugs consistently appear as the CMS is out of date. You may also have problems finding a web developer who specialises in building or updating websites on that platform.
Updating your website to be built on a popular and feature-rich CMS like WordPress will help alleviate those problems and allow you to manage your website’s contents with ease.
9. Poor conversion rate
Another reason why you may need to get a new website is a poor conversion rate. If your conversion rate is less than 10%, then your website isn’t hitting all of the points it needs to persuade consumers to purchase from your company or read your blogs.
Photo by Chris Liverani on Unsplash
10. Slow load times
According to SEMRush, Google recommended page load time is one to two seconds: “Two seconds is the threshold for ecommerce website acceptability. At Google, we aim for under a half-second.”
47% of people expect a web page to load in two seconds or less.
Slow load times lead to higher bounce rates(the percentage of visitors who enter the site and then leave immediately after) and are devastating for your business.
Consumer expectations are constantly evolving and they are looking for fast, easy-to-navigate sites.
A large number of unoptimised images can cause slow load times along with Javascript issues, too many ads, etc.
Since slow load times can be detrimental for your business, investing in a new website and starting from scratch can be an efficient option to decrease load times, resulting in lower bounce rates and satisfied customers.
11. Site has bugging issues on different browsers
The major issue websites can suffer from is bugging on different platforms.
It’s essential to make sure your website operates smoothly on each platform (Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, & Opera) since there isn’t one sole browser consumers use to visit your website.
Photo by Chris Ried on Unsplash
12. Website needs functionality updates
What do you want to happen when someone lands on your website? Make a purchase, schedule an appointment, sign up for your email blasts? How is your website’s functionality encouraging visitors to take action in the way you want?
Updating the functionality of your website can help push customers to purchase, take action, or further engage.
Simple ways to improve functionality:
- add call-to-actions
- chatbots for customer service
- surveys and questionnaires for feedback
- interactive quizzes for added engagement
- landing pages designed to achieve a specific goal (email sign-ups, etc.)
- optimising the site’s SEO to increase website visits.
Photo by Striving Blogger on Unsplash
13. Website isn’t mobile friendly
48% of users say that if a business’ website is not mobile-friendly, they’ll take it as an indication that the business simply doesn’t care.
According to Statista, mobile eCommerce spending in the United States equals 47.8 billion USD. More and more consumers are relying on their mobile devices to conduct their shopping and research versus desktops.
If your website isn’t mobile responsive, consumers are less likely to visit your website and may develop a negative perception of your brand.
To show your target audiences that you care about providing a positive user experience, spend your time improving the mobile experience.
Make sure it’s easy to find contact information, ensure text is legible, and that the design is formatted for mobile and not only for desktop. Test the mobile friendliness of your website.
Photo by Paul Hanaoka on Unsplash
14. High bounce rate
A high bounce rate is an indicator that your website is pushing away its visitors. As a rule of thumb, a bounce rate between 26-40% is ideal, while 41-55% is considered average.
Any number over 70% is when you should consider redesigning your website or taking a look at the metrics and seeing which pages have the highest bounce rates.
If you notice that your blog posts have high bounce rates, consider rewriting your content to better align with your customers’ expectations.
For instance, the title of the blog might be misleading and doesn’t correlate with the content which would annoy website visitors.
High bounce rates can negatively affect your website’s SEO, so you will need to evaluate the cause and put a strategy in place to alleviate the problem.
Photo by Myriam Jessier on Unsplash
15. Website isn’t branded consistently
Does your website align with your brand’s image? For instance, if your brand colours are green and white, you need to make sure the website uses the same colours to establish cohesiveness.
Your website needs to look the part and establish itself as a leader in its market. Make sure the site’s colours match your logo, the font is consistent throughout the site, and the photos align with the brand’s image.
How your brand presents itself in the market is how consumers are going to recognise it when they’re shopping at the grocery store or describing it to their friends.
If your website isn’t branded or consistent with other marketing materials and is composed of random elements, you should invest in a new website that conveys who your brand is.
Photo by Faizur Rehman on Unsplash
16. Not aesthetically pleasing
With so many attractive websites on the web today, it can be detrimental for your business if your website isn’t pleasing to the eye.
Consumers want visually appealing online experiences or else they will feel inclined to look elsewhere.
The last thing you want is your website to be considered unattractive.
It’s important to hire a website designer or a web design agency who can improve your website’s appeal to enhance your brand’s perceived value.
The better your brand looks, the more worth is associated with it.
Photo by Halacious on Unsplash
Want our advice?
Rubber Cheese is a purpose-driven web design agency, that has been building and designing intuitive and engaging websites since 2003.
We believe that in order to have the best website design, it’s critical to utilise data-driven improvements. Meaning hone in on the issues that are affecting your website the most, fix them and monitor the changes to see if it leads to conversions or lower bounce rates.
Want to learn about website design and why you need a new website? Visit our blog today to learn more.
Author:
Paul Wright Creative Director
Wag is the Co-Founder and Creative Director of Rubber Cheese. He has over 18 years of experience working in digital, and he merges his knowledge and hands-on approach to manage projects for global brands such as Pernod Ricard and Chivas Brothers.
He began his career as a brand and web designer, and his passion for all things design still thrives today. He describes himself as a champion of intuitive, user-friendly design, and his keen eye for detail is as strong as ever!
As a business owner and digital expert, he has a unique ability for finding and understanding the challenges that businesses face. He loves nothing more than using his creativity, knowledge and experience to develop BIG solutions.
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