Your website took a lot of time, hard work, and most likely, money to come together. For this reason, it can be hard to entertain going through that process again by admitting it’s time for a redesign. First, hear us out and consider these 5 questions before putting it off for another year.
1. Is your website mobile friendly?
It’s 2019. There is no excuse for having a website that isn’t mobile optimised. Mobiles and tablets have long overtaken desktops and laptops as the dominant tool for search, so it’s important you’re able to capitalise on this. If your website is full of images or CTAs that distort when viewed on a mobile this can put visitors off, so address this in a redesign.
2. How high is your bounce rate?
As part of your online strategy, you should be consistently reviewing goals and objectives that have been set. Many of the metrics for website success can be monitored and evaluated via Google Analytics. A lower bounce rate indicates visitors find your website valuable, whilst a high bounce rate is a key signifier of a website in need of a redesign because it means visitors are arriving at your website and leaving after only one page. A high bounce rate should also cause you to ask……
3. Are your users converting?
If your conversion numbers aren’t where your plan says they should be then this is another crucial factor in deciding to redesign. If you don’t have a conversion funnel already then create one! Beginning with the home page, you should know each stage a visitor navigates through in order to convert. This will help with a redesign as you’ll know which elements of your website need to change in order to guide visitors to the end goal.
4. How quickly is your webpage loading?
If a website takes longer than a few seconds to load then that’s enough time for a potential visitor to move on. Make sure you know how quickly all pages of your website load, and check them across more than one browser. You may load quickly on Google Chrome, but not so fast on Safari; this is something that needs to be fixed. Website loading speed is also a criterion by which Google ranks your website in search engine results. Use tools such as ping.dom to make sure you’re keeping up.
5. How well are you ranking on search engines?
As well as being mobile optimised, an effective website is also SEO optimised. Google website crawlers respond to relevant keywords and links to other sites within your content as a sign of quality, which will help your website rank higher in search engine results. If your ranking isn’t particularly high then consider fine-tuning your keywords and making sure they appear, especially in your opening paragraphs and metatext.
For more tips have a look at our blog or get in touch with us at info@helloslate.co.uk
Posted: July 2019
Author: Slate
