New Year – Time for a New Website?
What are the signs you need a new website?
In today’s online world, for a lot of companies, a website is the first point of contact a customer will have of your business. First impressions count – especially as people click away from a website within seconds if they don’t like what they see. In fact, it is estimated that over 75% of people judge the credibility of a business based on it’s websites. Here is a list of the main reasons why it may be time for your business to have a new website.
1. Your website is not mobile friendly
A website is not mobile friendly if it cannot be easily seen on a phone or tablet. This means that the text must be easily readable, with minimum tapping, zooming or horizontal scrolling required. Google does not like websites that are not mobile friendly. If you have a website that is not mobile friendly and use Google AdWords, Google will penalise you and charge you more to advertise your website. Even if you don’t use Google AdWords, Google will still penalise your website and it will slip down the page rankings making it harder for customers to find you.
2. Your website is more than 3 years old
Your website is at least 3 years old and has not been touched since it was created, then it may be time for a new website. Design trends move quickly in the online world and it doesn’t take long for a website to start looking old fashioned. In addition, some types of businesses need to have their websites ‘on-trend’ more than others. For example if you are an interior designer, you website will probably have to be updated more frequently than say a plumber.
The best way to determine if your website is starting to look old fashioned is to look at some of your competitor’s website and see how it compares to your own website.
3. It is difficult to navigate around your website
Your website has grown in the past few years but in a haphazard manner. You even find it difficult to find some of the pages on your website. Unless your website has a logical navigational structure then customers will become frustrated and go to another website that has the information they need. Again, this is another sign you need a new website.
4. Your website has a high bounce rate
A high bounce rate is when you are getting people to your website but they are clicking away very quickly.It means that your website is not generating sales or leads for your business. All websites have a percentage of people who click away very quickly but if the bounce rate for your website is higher than your industry average then you need to investigate whether the look of the website itself is the problem.
Another consequence of having a high bounce rate is that Google does not like it. This means your website will slip down the page rankings making it harder for your customers to find you.
5. Your website is slow
Most people expect a website page to load in under 2 seconds. A slow website will not only encourage your customers to abandon your business and search elsewhere for what they are looking for but it will also effect your search engine ranking. Google hates slow websites and penalises websites that take to long to load. It is estimated that by increasing the speed of your website that you will increase conversions by over 7%. Fortunately there are lots of ways to improve the speed of your website including resizing images.
Dynamic Websites specialise in small business web design. We are based in the Melbourne suburb of Hawthorn and provide services throughout Australia. We understand what it takes to get a small business online at an affordable price and with the minimum of fuss. Along with designing websites for small business, tradies and NDIS service providers we provide online marketing services. Our online marketing for small business extends to Google Ads, Google My Business, Microsoft Advertising, search engine optimisation (SEO), content writing and, blog writing.
