At one point, your website probably looked great. You spent thousands of dollars to get it designed and built to your liking, but how do you know when it is time to update or overhaul it?
HTML Labs put together a list of non-technical indicators that your company website needs an update.
The Copyright date on your website is more than 3 years old.
Times change, styles evolve, and capabilities expand. We get it, you spent a lot of time and money to get your site put up in 2008. But it is time to at least make some significant updates if your website is more than 2-3 years old. Three years on the internet is like a decade in any other industry.
Flash animations are on your website
This would indicate your website is likely quite old. Flash is usually slow, is out of style, and most phones will not even play the animations. If your website has flash, it is time for an overhaul.
Music plays when someone navigates to your website
This is a terrible practice, and an awful thing to do to your customers. Playing music automatically when your get to a page should be left for Myspace profiles.
Your Nephew that who is ” good with computers” spent an afternoon building it
Ok, maybe he is good with computers, but should something as important as your company website be left in control with your nephew?
You don’t remember the last time someone told you they liked your website
It is probably a decent indicator that something is wrong, or maybe it is just blah.
Your company moved, changed phone numbers, or made other substantial changes, but your website doesn’t indicate the change.
If any of these apply, you definitely need to update your website.
Links on your most important pages return 404 errors, or errors of any kind.
You may be losing sales if potential customers can’t find the information they are looking for because of 404 errors. Search engines hate 404 pages, and sites with too many may see negative effects on their rankings.
You don’t know if your website gets traffic, or if it is converting to sales
Your website should be treated like the asset it is. If you don’t know how your website is doing, it may not need a design overhaul, but you definitely need a plan to track and improve its effectiveness.
The website loads slowly
In the age of highspeed internet, nobody waits more than 3 seconds for a webpage to load. Search engines hate slow websites too!
The website isn’t mobile friendly.
Nearly 50% of internet traffic is now on mobile devices. If your website isn’t mobile friendly, you are losing sales. In 2015, Google announced that websites that were not mobile friendly would see negative effects on their search rankings. In 2016, it has moved even farther with AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages). Google is now giving benefit to sites that use AMP for near instant loads on mobile.
If one or more of these applied to you, contact us today for a free consult.