UPDATED: When should I update my website design?
The importance of keeping website up to date in a digital world is the difference between a company finding themselves with qualified sales and leads versus feeling as if their website is not generating any leads at all.
Website design is everything today. It is estimated that 81 percent of consumers feel less about a company with an outdated website. This means that the very first impression of your company is a negative or unbiased opinion.
A company has less than two seconds to make a positive lasting impression on a potential customer or consumer. Two seconds and with search engines, it is even less. A modern, responsive website is no longer something that a company should continue to put off.
If a company is unsure of where to go next or if their website needs to be updated, here are the first notions our experts find that need updated.
How do you know when it is time to update your website?
The importance of keeping website up to date is that the digital world is competitive for each and every industry. There are over 1.5 billion websites and over 90 percent of content that is submitted to search engines will never see the first page of the search engine. There are several reasons why this happens, but an old and outdated website is a contributing factor to that, along with about 269 other ranking factors.
Our experts suggest that every two years a website’s design should be updated and that is at a minimum. We no longer live in a time of “set it and forget it” websites. Design and technology changes. The needs and habits of users changes.
With that, it can be inevitable for websites to be kept with the current times. After all, a company’s website is one of the first impressions it will give, followed by its social media presence.
Content
Why is content one of the most important factors of keeping a website updated? This is because the content that is published on the website is what search engines will grab and consumers will be reading.
Are there services, products or blogs that are no longer relevant to your company? Did your company update terms and conditions or those products and/or services? What about blogs? Call to actions (CTAs)? Yeah, all of this really does matter.
The difference between updated and outdated content could be leads and sales or no leads and sales.
Flash
Flash splash pages- it is time to update your website.
Flash splash pages became popular in the late 1990s. They were the windbreaker of websites. Multicolored, flashy (no pun intended) and served no purpose other than looking fancy.
Back in the day, many websites relied on a Flash splash page to welcome a user to their site. Today, that is simply not the case. Most internet platforms and mobile devices lack support in Flash. Additionally, Google is all about usability. If your website is not user-friendly, they could dish out a penalty to you.
Security
One of the main reasons for keeping a website updated is security. If your website is hacked by some chance, it not only hurts your company, but it hurts your consumers and reputation. Any company or consumer information can be stolen and put your company in a difficult position.
This is part of the reason why our experts suggest updating a website at a minimum of every two years. However, the best thing to do is add an SSL certification to your website. This does not prevent hacking, but it does keep your website safer. This certification needs to be updated once a year and alerts your company if something happened before that one year mark.
Along with this, Google released an update that alerts consumers if your website is secure or not secure. A website that is not secure is one that consumers will hit the back button on. This tells a consumer that your website is vulnerable to hacks and issues, which means, they more than likely will not add their information to said website.
From there, how are your loading speeds?
Loading speeds
Another importance of keeping websites up to date is to minimize slow loading speeds. As our experts stated above, you have two seconds to make a great impression, but once a user begins reminiscing about the AOL dial-up days, it is time to update the website.
The speed of a website is a killer. Nearly half of website users hold the expectation of a site loading in two seconds or less. Once they have waited for three seconds, you can count on them leaving your site and moving on to someone else's.
What could cause slow loading speeds? An outdated website, bulky code, massive images and videos and so many other factors! While that image is still useful for your website, is it too large? Yup, this causes slow loading speeds.
It is a dinosaur
Don’t be the “beeper” of websites. A mobile-friendly website is critical to a company’s online success because mobile search and website usage now greatly outweighs desktop usage.
Mobile-friendliness goes beyond being a tiny version of your website. It includes readable text, quality optimized images, adequately spaced tap targets, functioning content, etc.
Much like page-loading speed, mobile-friendly websites are favored by search engines across the board. Why? It all comes down to user experience.
These reasons and others are why the importance of keeping website up to date should be on every company's radar.
Updating your website can be a serious overhaul and oftentimes a project that gets pushed back year after year. However, as the face of your company, it should become a priority. By modernizing your site regularly with fresh content, you’ll have an easier time updating in the future.