Why you Need to Redesign your Website

During my career as a marketer, starting in 2015, whenever a new CMO appeared on my project, we immediately started to change the website. I have seen many times more redesigns of competitors. And 9/10 times it was terrible. The funny thing is that it usually only worsened the conversion of the project and cost companies a lot of money. Usually, the new CMO would make a presentation and say something like this:

“In the rapidly changing digital world, your website is the primary platform for engaging with your audience, increasing conversions, and building your brand identity. However, as technology evolves and user expectations change, the need to redesign your website is becoming clear, as 50% of consumers consider website design an important criterion when choosing a brand.”

But the numbers in monthly reports with falling sales speak for themselves. So what is the problem? And how do you do a redesign right?

This article discusses the reasons why a website redesign is necessary to stay competitive and achieve your business goals. I will share my own experience and tell you what to look for. If you are thinking about redesigning your website, this article is for you.

• Usability enhancement

According to Statista, 60% of users consider usability one of the most essential features of an online shop. So, user-centered information architecture and user experience design are crucial to attracting potential customers and achieving your business goals. 

Redesigning a website is an opportunity to improve its usability, which can lead to a more engaging and satisfying visitor experience. Usability checks can identify design issues that lead to high bounce rates or low user retention, such as complex onboarding or a non-user-centric UI/UX design. Research shows that 21% of abandoned carts are due to complicated or lengthy checkout processes. If you consider renovating to achieve higher conversion rates and improved customer retention, you can use your team’s efforts or outsource website design services. 

In addition, accessibility is becoming increasingly crucial for business owners worldwide. It ensures that a website can be navigated using a keyboard and its contents are understandable to someone using a screen reader. Accessibility is important to consider for your website for two reasons: it makes your business more inclusive and prevents you from facing fines for compliance violations. 

• User Interface improvement

Forrester reports that a well-designed user interface can increase conversion rates by nearly 200%, meaning that visual elements play a vital role in attracting potential customers. 

UI design can improve the user experience by giving the website a professional and polished look, as well as making it more appealing to visitors. When used effectively, it can contribute to a positive brand perception. Moreover, visual elements can also be utilized to highlight essential features or information, making the website’s navigation easier for users. 

• Reflecting your business strategy and audience 

Your website should act as a mediator between your business and your customers, embodying your business strategy and your customers’ needs. 

Your website should have all the features and functionality that your business strategy has planned to ensure its successful execution. If you have updated your business plans, it’s essential to ensure that your website reflects this change. In addition, before beginning the redesigning process, it is important to determine your target audience, understand their needs and desires, and determine what they expect from your product. It will help you create a UI/UX design that is entirely targeted to your audience and will improve conversion rates.

• Brand consistency and identity

Your website is often the initial point of contact between your business and prospective clients. Therefore, it must reflect your brand identity and values. 

A website redesign allows you to ensure consistency across all aspects of your brand, starting from the visual design to the tone of voice. Incorporating your brand’s colors, fonts, and imagery throughout your website can reinforce brand recognition and build trust with your audience. 

If your website has grown significantly in the past few years, it should review brand guidelines to ensure a cohesive design. It involves determining a color palette, fonts, font hierarchy, button styles, iconography, and other design elements, as even minor differences can frustrate website visitors. These inconsistencies often occur on websites that had numerous administrators or merged with other microsites over time. 

• Mobile optimization

Research shows that mobile devices account for 65.49% of global website traffic, and this number is constantly increasing. Optimizing your website for the mobile audience can help you to attract more visitors. 

If you haven’t already optimized your website for mobile devices, you should consider the redesign. According to marketing studies, mobile websites generate the highest percentage of returning visitors, with 74%. To achieve such an effect for your business, you must ensure a smooth browsing experience for all users by having a responsive website design that works seamlessly across all screen sizes and devices. What is more, your website needs to be able to navigate easily with touch gestures and look consistent across different OSs. 

• Technological advancements

Outdated website infrastructure can impede your website’s performance and functionality, especially during high loads, as sudden system crashes not only result in missed customer opportunities but also create a negative brand impression.

Redesigning a website can provide an opportunity to review its architecture and functionality to keep up with your business goals and customers’ needs. If your website is slow, you should analyze its servers, code density, caching techniques, and contents to find possibilities for further improvement. As Google’s research has shown that 53% of users lose interest in case a mobile website is loading for more than 3 seconds. 

Additionally, you can implement new features, integrate third-party or custom tools to automate your workflows, boost team productivity, and ensure your website remains up-to-date in the long run. You can also consider adding the latest technological advancements, such as an AI-powered chatbot that, according to Gartner, can increase ROI to over 270%, enhance user satisfaction, and improve customer support.

• Scalability and security upgrades

A website should be scalable to handle high loads and secure to protect customers’ personal data. Implementing robust security measures is crucial to prevent reputational damage, financial losses, and legal liabilities resulting from data loss and security breach incidents.

If you haven’t updated your website’s security or your website doesn’t handle high loads, a website redesign is definitely worth considering. During a redesign process, developers will check whether your website is sufficiently secure and, if not, eliminate its vulnerabilities, as studies have shown that flaws in web application coding cause 72% of security vulnerabilities. Furthermore, optimization of the code can contribute to the website’s ability to scale. Other possibilities to improve scalability include implementing a tool to monitor website traffic, which can result in fast loading times and a superior user experience. 

• Search Engine Optimization 

SEO is essential for attracting organic traffic to your website. However, its best practices are constantly evolving, and what worked for your website in the past may not be effective today.

When you redesign your website, you have the opportunity to optimize it for search engines and improve its visibility in search results. By integrating SEO-friendly best practices such as clean code, Markdowns, and fast loading times, you can increase the ranking of your website in results pages and attract more audience without paying for advertising. Moreover, you can eliminate broken links that lead to error messages instead of live pages and upgrade the navigation structure if it fails to address the needs of your visitors to enhance user experience.

Conclusion

Redesigning your website is not merely an aesthetic concern but a crucial step for keeping up with the competition. To succeed, you must adapt to changing user expectations, optimize for mobile devices, improve SEO, maintain brand consistency, and take advantage of technological advancements. These elements combined will help you achieve your business goals. Therefore, if your website lacks some features, don’t hesitate to redesign it.

Alex

Over the past 8 years, I have realised that the most important weapon we have as tech enthusiasts is information. Information that I can share and actually help you solve some of your life problems. Of course, I'm going to lose some of that because of AI, but it's making me more productive today!

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