Pretend you’re being visited by three ghosts of websites past for a moment and ask yourself, when was the last time you updated your website? You might realise that, come the New Year, the most generous thing you can do for yourself is invest in a new website, and it’s all going to tie into Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’, because, why not? ‘Tis the season.
When your website first launched, you were probably in love with it. Perhaps you were an early adopter of a theme, or an aesthetic and you sat fairly smugly and watched as all the other websites began to adopt the same style. Maybe your website had new features for the time, like bringing asymmetry into the design, or using a video on the homepage that plays automatically.
Unfortunately, that was four years ago and your site is now pretty outdated and slow and this is probably why you’re no longer in love with it. All the websites are starting to look the same and all the things that were so uniquely yours no longer stand out, because your average internet user has seen the same features hundreds of times before. It’s also probably no longer helping you achieve your sales and marketing goals, which is the entire point of having a website in the first place.
You’re in love with your website’s past. What could be wrong with your website’s present?
1. It isn’t ‘On Brand’.
Surely your business has updated in the last 4 years or so? New products and services, or a logo change?
If your website hasn’t been updated to reflect the way your business has changed, you are in danger of misleading your audience with who you are as a brand and what your services and products are.
Come on, you’re rattling Marley’s chains, here…
2. You’re Not Correctly Positioned
What this means is that you’re not attracting the right person to your website because of, well *gestures to all of the above.* A potential prospect will only become interested in this older version of yourselves and will think less of your company if you no longer provide a service that your website is advertising, for example. Consistently bring your best and most recent work or products and services to the forefront and you’ll mitigate any confusion about who you are and you’re about.
3. Your Website’s Kinda Slow…
How long does it take your site to load? Did you know the loading time you should be aiming for is under 4 seconds? Check with Pingdom or GTMetrix to see just how much work you need to do. A long loading time means you probably have too many images or videos that aren’t optimised, or there’s a lot of clutter lying around from old themes and disused bits of code that are the equivalent of digital flotsam and jetsam dragging your website down the depths of the Google search results.
4. And It Has a High Bounce Rate!
We know, we know, you’re pouring all you’ve got into SEO, and blogging and positioning and everything else but the second anyone lands on your homepage they’re off again before they’ve completed an action!
There’s a couple of things you could be doing wrong here, for example your content could be missing the mark (sure, you’re posting content, but is it GOOD content?) or the navigation on your site could be putting people off due to being clunky or hard to read or otherwise not very accessible.
Now we’ve reached the part of the article where the skeletal hand of Death’s shadow casts your gaze over to a small, forgotten headstone lodged unceremoniously into the wintry earth. The fog seems to part for you as you run over to see the words etched into the stone. It’s inscribed simply, “Here Lies My Sales Figures. They Flatlined Too Soon.” You drop to your knees and plea for another result but lo, warnings not heeded and thus is the future written.
Except this isn’t a Dickensian novel and all things can be fixed.
All the aspects of your website that are holding it back can be reversed with a new website. Rebuilt with a refreshed perspective in place. What can be done?
1. Appeal To Mobile Phones.
You may have already considered this, but an up-to-date website will be responsive and mobile friendly. This doesn’t mean it’ll just load on a mobile phone, but rather it’s optimised for the mobile phone screen, with no features and no aspect of the design sacrificed in order to run.
2. Keep It Above The Fold
Digital media can still learn a thing or two from print media. Keeping it ‘above the fold’ means putting the main information or key aspect you want viewed/clicked on above the fold of the paper (before the user has to scroll down). This will help your website in numerous ways.
- It reduces your bounce rate because the user can click on a landing page, find what they need, and complete the call to action you want them to complete.
- It keeps your site visually appealing as it encourages simple design choices that easily allows for changing themes as you keep on top of trends. Just remember to ‘clean house’ regularly so you don’t hoard digital waste! We also provide SEO and website maintenance as a Service, so you don’t have to worry about it!
- If you go down an environmentally friendly route for your new build; and we suggest you do, here’s how, it allows for only the images being viewed to have to load, instead of loading every image that’s on the page regardless of where it is on the fold.
- This also helps with your website’s loading time. As we all know, the quicker the site loads the better your ranking is on Google – and the more trustworthy your user sees you as. If a website appears sluggish, the user assumes it’s out of date and possibly insecure and they may be hesitant to complete any actions on the page.
3. Upgrades People, Upgrades!
Excuse the Robots reference inside the Christmas Carol reference.
Your new website should be easily updated with low to no code so you can update and swap out content to your sales and marketing plans’ desires. This also means you can keep content optimised for your business goals and turn off and switch on blogs and pages as needed.
Now, not all of the pains of the present may be applicable to you. You may be thinking you don’t need a new website because you have only one of the issues listed above. However, if you relate a little bit to any part of them, you need a new website.
Get in touch with our team today to find out how we can transform your website from a cautionary tale to a crucial arm of your business.
Give us a call on 01452 729952 or drop us an email at hello@brace.co.uk and we’ll get you started.
