Is It Time to Redesign My Website?

“Is it time to redesign my website?”

A lot of small businesses ask themselves this regularly and it’s a fair question. A website is not an unchanging asset. Changes in digital marketing, the internet at large, consumer preference, and search engine algorithms all impact your website.

What once worked perfectly might not work a few years later. Still, while the internet is constantly evolving, few small businesses have the resources and time to update their website annually. Even if they did, a full website redesign every 12 months would likely just confuse customers.

This is the crux of the problem. Waiting too long to redesign a struggling site could cost your brand money. Updating a site too frequently makes your marketing strategy convoluted and more difficult than it needs to be. How do you know when it’s time to redesign a website?

Well, you’re in luck. The web developers here at JSL Marketing & Web Design assembled their tips for evaluating when to redesign.

Signs That You Don’t Need to Redesign Your Website

Before we dive into the tell-tale signs that you need to redesign your website, we want to make one thing clear. Sometimes, a full-website redesign is not the right call. There are no hard and fast rules here, but we thought it was important to note occasions when we might not recommend a website redesign.

Sign 1: Optimizing Does the Ticket

Redesigning a website is a big lift and takes time. However, depending on your unique situation, it might be better to address issues within the site that don’t require a complete redesign, but do require some web design changes. Changing graphics and colors, rewriting content to be better optimized for search engines, and tweaking some technical elements oftentimes can rapidly improve your website. These changes certainly will change the website itself, but the main core of the site is usually kept intact. If these light changes are easy to implement and will have a large impact, there’s no need to redesign the site.

Sign 2: Additional Opportunities

Maybe the problem isn’t even your website. Maybe it’s how you’re promoting your website. Changes to site promotion strategy sometimes are all you need to improve a site’s performance. If the basics of your website are sound, but we see that your competitors are much more visible on Google Ads, social media, and local SEO than your business, that usually means that the site isn’t the problem. It’s the overarching marketing strategy that could be used to promote the site that needs tweaking.

Sign 3: It’s Not Broken

If your site is driving visits and revenue and you’re happy with the results, then it’s probably best not to completely redesign. Now, we always recommend paying close attention to performance and attribution, to ensure you’re not missing anything. However, if the site is performing, don’t fix what’s not broken.

It’s better to know what needs tweaking and have a well-researched plan than to change a site just for the sake of novelty. If the site is performing, we might recommend a full site audit to confirm that it’s functioning properly and see if there are optimizations to make. However, if that comes back with good results, then you can let the site be for now.

Signs It Is Time to Redesign Your Website

Sign 1: It’s Been a Few Years

A newer website isn’t always a better website, but a newer website will likely have optimizations an older website does not. Google has hundreds of ranking factors that are used to rank websites. Some elements of SEO are pretty set in stone and never really change year to year. For instance, being mobile-friendly has been important for website rankings for years and given just how popular cell phones are, this shouldn’t change any time soon. Other elements of Google, however, vary year to year and it’s not uncommon for a new policy or algorithm to change how a site ranks.

Take all of that together and you start to realize that a site that has not undergone major structural changes in a few years is probably behind the times.  That is usually reflected in our next sign:

Sign 2: Performance

An underperforming website always makes itself known. If you pay close enough attention to the vitals of the site and where the site ranks, issues will become readily apparent. Data from platforms like Google Analytics and SEMrush are always the best ways of knowing it’s time to redesign your website. If you consult with these platforms and see downward trends in site visitors, revenue or time on page or competitors surging, it’s time to consider changing something and fast.

Sign 3: Your Business Has Changed

If you are unveiling new services, expanding into new markets, or have a new logo, it’s usually more cost-effective and efficient to work on a new website. Launching a new web page or logo as you go often gets messy. Inflection points in your business are the perfect time for a comprehensive evaluation of your site, your business’s needs, and your content, and it can often be more budget-friendly to roll those efforts into a new site.

Sign 4: It Looks Old

This is a highly subjective reason to redesign, but sometimes you can just tell. If you look at your website and think it looks a little clunky or old-fashioned, you’re likely not alone. Your site visitors probably think that too. You might be able to tweak the graphic design of the site, but sometimes, the problem is the platform the site was built on. This almost always means it’s time for a full website redesign.

Sign 5: It’s Simpler to Rebuild

A site with a lot of issues might not be worth the effort. If the content needs rewriting, the site map is outdated, there are multiple SEO issues and the graphic design needs a complete overhaul, redesigning might be easier. You can, of course, still take what worked from your old site where it makes sense. Bedrock web content, with a refresh, is usually worth examining and repurposing. However, if the old site is a bit of a disaster and needs a lot of work, it’s often easy to start fresh with a brand-new site.

Contact JSL Marketing & Web Design for a Free Website Consultation!