Websites are very powerful marketing tools which help millions of profit-making enterprises generate revenue. They are useful for consumers too, with 81% of people admitting to conducting online research prior to making purchasing decisions.

As more and more customers do due diligence before spending their hard-earned cash, there is a big chance that a visitor who lands on a dysfunctional or archaic website will bounce off to the nearest rival.

If a website is failing to help a business meet its goals, it’s more likely because the site needs a redesign.

Below are 6 key pointers to help determine if your website requires a facelift.

1) Website is not attracting new leads or conversions

The purpose of a website is to get visitors to convert by fulfilling a particular action. A conversion may involve filling out a contact form, subscribing to a newsletter, making a purchase or signing up for a newsletter.

If your current website is getting lots of visitors who are not fulfilling the expected goal, it’s probably because the design is putting them off or the site is not really providing them with what they are looking for.

2) Site not mobile responsive

Is navigating your website with a smartphone a huge struggle? Chances are the website is not attractive enough to search engines.

Moreover, Google Search gives preference to sites that are optimised for mobile in its search rankings. With estimates pointing out that there are about 2,5 billion smartphone users across the world, a mobile unfriendly site is really bad for business.

3) Ranking is poor on search engines

If you do a Google search of your key products or services and a random or competitor product pops up instead, it probably means your website is not well optimised for search engines.

With 95% of people who conduct Google searches admitting to not clicking past the first results page, ranking on the first page of search engine results increases chances of visitors finding your products and potentially converting.

Proper on-page search engine optimisation will improve the reputation of your website, helping it earn relevant traffic from search engine results pages. If your website is not ranking on Google, then it’s time for a redesign.

4) Website is a mess and difficult to navigate

When visitors come to your site, they expect pages to be structured in a manner which allows them to easily navigate towards finding what they are looking for.

Key pages like the Contact Us and Value Proposition pages should be easy to find because they provide valuable information to visitors. When visitors struggle to locate valuable information from your website, they will revert back to the search engine and navigate to rival sites.

5) You can’t update your content easily

A great website should allow you to seamlessly upload or remove information in minimal time so you can go on and concentrate on other essential duties within the business.

If you are finding it very difficult to add a new image or change simple text in your website, perhaps its high time you considered a new design.

6) Slow Load Times

Imagine you have a burst pipe at home and are in urgent of a plumber. You do a Google search and click on a plumber service website that takes forever to load. What do you do? You will probably browse back to the search results page and click on the next best option.

The average attention span of the human is estimated to be at around 8 seconds. If a website takes more than 3 seconds to load, a visitor will most likely navigate away to a quicker site.

Furthermore, a website with low speed scores provides very poor user experience and may get penalised by Google making it rank even lower in search results pages, more reason for you to revamp your site.

If your website has any of these issues, Out of the Box Ideas can help update or rebuild it to better represent your business and its online presence.

Our business model simple, we’re your enabling partner, working silently in the background, providing the expertise and support that you need to look good to your clients.

Being able to hand off and rely on us to take care of your technical, web and mobile app development requirements lets you get on with what you’re good at and take care of those all-important client relationships.