Time to update your website
When is the time to update your website?
Promoting your brand isn’t just about business cards, brochures and exhibitions. Your website is often the first place that potential customers will go to understand more about your business. It’s important that this first impression isn’t just lasting, but also positive.
The web moves very quickly. It’s easy to get left behind with an old-fashioned looking internet presence. Customers need to have easy access to relevant information and to contact you with the minimum of fuss. No complaints does not mean no problems. If a visitor is unimpressed with your website, they won’t spend time telling you about it. They will be likely to lookup your competitor instead.
How can you tell that your site is due for a makeover? Here are some of the more common reasons that show you it is time to update your website:
Age
It’s a generally accepted rule of thumb to update your website design every 3 or so years, with design tweaks and updates at regular points during this period. As much as website design trends change, the frameworks on which they are built are also being constantly developed, allowing for a cleaner, more efficient and more user-friendly experience for your website visitors. purpleplanet is approaching its 11th birthday, and we’re on website number five!
A good analogy would be with mobile phones: if Apple, Samsung or Sony didn’t bring out a new phone model on a regular basis, do you think your current handset would still be as quick and stylish in three years’ time, or do you think software advancements and the introduction of new technology will make your phone slow and incompatible?
Mobile
You’ve probably heard of the phrase “responsive design”. A responsive website is flexible, allowing visitors to experience your website as you intended, no matter which device they use. The internet is accessed from an ever-growing amount of handsets, tablets, watches and monitors, with screens small to large. Your website must account for as many of these eventualities as possible, allowing potential customers to get the best experience of your digital business, no matter how they access it.
Size
Around 10 or so years ago, it was standard to build websites that were 800 pixels wide. The usual font size was about 12 pixels. A website with these measurements would fit nicely into a standard desktop browser and be perfectly legible. As monitor technology has vastly improved, and with the introduction of such things as retina displays, standards has changed. A website with these fixed dimensions would now sit like an island in an ocean on any modern screen. It’s another argument for a responsive website, but it’s also an opportunity to work with much more space, allowing your content to breathe and not be cluttered.
Speed
As internet speeds increase at an alarming rate, your site needs to keep pace. There’s no point in your potential customers having breakneck broadband if your site still loads like it was 1996. In all likelihood, an initial load time of more than 4 (yes, FOUR!) seconds will lose you a third of your visitors. Also good to bear in mind is that Google’s algorithms take loading times into consideration. If the loading time is slow it’s time to update your website. A quick-loading website is a higher-ranked website.
SEO
Speed is just one factor that is used for search results. It’s important to be found quickly and easily by your customers, not all of whom will know about you when they open Google and begin their search. Optimising your pages with keywords and focussed information will help your site climb the results pages. The easier people can find you, the more chance they will visit your website, which can only serve to increase your leads and potential business opportunities.
Graphics
It’s amazing how many websites still use pre-built images, where text and CSS can achieve the same (and often better!) results. Buttons, banners, callouts, etc. can all be made using pure text, which is infinitely better for search engine optimisation, and creative use of borders, background colours, patterns, shadows and so on. This method is preferred when it comes to dynamically resizing the website for smaller-screened devices. Styled text is also much lighter (i.e. quicker load times) than images.
Flash
If your website has Flash elements, or some kind of animated intro, then you’re already way overdue to update your website. Flash was popular, and heavily used, 10-15 years ago. Most popular websites now no longer use any form of Flash in their code. Modern websites prefer the more flexible and forward-thinking HTML5 for any kind of animation or for playing video files.
Content
It’s your content, so you should be able to add to, edit and remove it as and when you choose, without paying a web expert to do it for you. At purpleplanet, we prefer a CMS (Content Management System) such as WordPress, which allows simple administration of content, callouts, menus and blogs, without the ongoing cost of an outside resource every time. Keeping content separate from code also allows for any future redesign process to be much simpler, as the content simply passes through the designed templates. If we create a new design, we build new templates and all your existing content then displays inside these.
Social
Your online brand isn’t limited to your website. You will probably already have a Twitter account, a Facebook page, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram or any one of many other social media platforms. By sharing these on your website with your target audience, you’re offering users a way to keep in touch with your updates, on their social media tool of choice. Every blog post, tweet, status update, shared image or comment you make is a step further in promoting your brand, making your message a unified one.
It’s time to stop considering. You need a budget for this work, as having an out of date, stale, slow and often broken website is not only a missed opportunity, but it’s probably hurting your business every single day. It may take a good chunk of your marketing capital to get the site up to current expectations but, once there, it will be easier to stay at the edge, without the need for similar expense in the near future.
