How to Evaluate if You Need a Website Redesign

It certainly requires an investment of your time, money, and effort.

A new website is also an investment in the future of your brand.

This is because your website is a digital reflection of your business. It’s not enough to “just have” a website. The site needs to serve your audience’s needs, support your business goals, and provide a consistent brand experience.

But as time goes on, your brand and audience can evolve. When things change, your website may no longer meet the goals you once had for it. This is where investing in a new website can help you recalibrate your business’s digital presence and reinforce where you want to take your brand for the future.

A website redesign isn’t a decision to make haphazardly. Because it is such a large investment, you want to make sure there’s real purpose and intention behind starting the project. That way when your new site launches, it’s accomplishing clear objectives that support your business goals.

To help you evaluate whether a redesign is the right decision for your brand, here are four signs that indicate you may need a new website:

Your website design no longer fits your brand

Perhaps your business or organization recently rebranded. Or maybe your site was built years ago and now the design looks dated. You’re needing to bring the design up-to-speed so it reflects where your business is at today. When your people land on your site, you want it to look and sound like it’s coming from your brand now, not 12 years ago. An inconsistent or outdated design may confuse your visitors, but a solid website redesign can resolve this and bring cohesiveness to your brand.

Your website isn’t optimized for various devices and browsers

Search engine algorithms (like Google’s algorithm) will penalize you if your website isn’t mobile friendly. This means your site will appear lower in organic search results, making your business harder to find online. Plus, when someone eventually lands on your website, if it doesn’t provide a good experience on that particular person’s device, there’s a good chance they won’t stay on it for long. Updating your site with a new, fully responsive design will make it possible for users to access your site from a variety of devices and browsers. That way you’re not unintentionally deterring visitors from engaging with your business.

Your website offers a poor user experience

If your website isn’t easy to navigate, it’s hurting your brand’s online performance. Maybe your site has a poor link structure (meaning the site map is messy and doesn’t have sufficient hierarchy) or the user flow doesn’t make sense so people can’t find what they’re looking for. Pages might load slowly. Or your site may not be accessible for people with disabilities who use a screen reader or other adaptive technologies. For these reasons, your website isn’t bringing in conversions because, at best, your visitors are confused and struggling to navigate the site. Or, at worst, they can’t use the site at all. A website redesign should address these issues so navigating your site becomes a pleasant, not frustrating, experience.

Your website is difficult to maintain internally

Updating the content on your site might be a consistent source of stress for your team. Maybe you have to call up your previous web developer every time you want to make a small change to the content — not because you want to, but because you have to. You can’t easily make the change yourself because you’d need a programming degree to update an image. It’s a nightmare for your internal team to manage the content. You have no real control over it. Building a new website with a user-friendly CMS (content management system) can take the stress out of maintaining your site and make simple content updates painless for your internal team.

There’s no exact timeline for how often you should be redesigning your website. It all depends on the needs and objectives of your business and audience, and how well your current website is meeting them. It’s a good idea to review your site regularly to verify the content, design, and user experience are still meeting the goals you have for them.

A new website is a large investment and it’s not one you necessarily want to undertake if you don’t have to. Using these indicators to evaluate the decision for your brand can help you make sure you’re investing in what matters most for your business.

Have more questions about whether a website redesign may be the right next step for your business or organization? We’d like to help. Contact us and let us know what’s not working about your existing website.