1. You’re not sure why you have one
Every trade business worth its salt should have a website right? But have you ever stopped and thought why?
All too often companies spend a fortune on web development, SEO, and paid advertising without really knowing what they’re trying to achieve other than “getting traffic”. While lots of visitors to your site is definitely a good thing, it’s of little use if the site hasn’t been designed with an end-goal in mind. Knowing what the goal is, you can have your site designed in a way that will encourage visitors to take the action you want them to take.
Many businesses simply want to provide a means for customers to find and contact them online, others may also want to build a mailing list or provide a platform for customers to book jobs. Whatever the case, it’s critical to have a clearly defined set of goals for your site.
2. You forget you have one
Running a business is hard work and in the flurry of day-to-day tasks it’s easy for the website to drop down the priority list and be forgotten. If this is the case, chances are it’s not giving you the ROI it should.
Getting the most out of your website doesn’t need to take up a lot of time and simple actions can lead to drastic improvements. For instance, are your contact details up to date? This seems like a no-brainer but can be easily overlooked when moving premises or changing phone numbers.
Periodically reviewing & updating the pages on your site is also advantageous as it can improve your search ranking (Google favours freshly updated content) and you can amend any outdated information that may be off putting to potential customers. Regularly adding new content is also beneficial from an SEO standpoint and can be as simple as including a company news feed or adding new images to a gallery of your work.
It’s also important to gauge how much new business stems from your online presence. When new customers come on board, ask how they found you–if the website is rarely mentioned it may be time to think about making some improvements or engaging an SEO consultant.
3. You haven’t had it redesigned in years
While that site you had built in 2005 may have been “cutting edge” at the time, it’s no secret that technology and design trends move quickly, especially in the online world. A dated-looking web page can definitely make a bad first impression but that’s usually the least of the problems associated with an outdated site.
Search engines are constantly changing their algorithms (Google changes its algorithm more than 500 times per year) and although these are usually only minor changes, the occasional major updates can have a significant impact on the way your site is ranked. So if the code behind your web pages hasn’t been updated in a long time, there’s a good chance that you’re being outranked by others whose code has been optimised for the latest search algorithms.
With the use of mobile web browsers steadily increasing, it’s also important that your site can be viewed easily on smartphones and tablets. This has given rise to a field of design known as Responsive Web Design (RWD) whereby web pages are designed to be fluid and adapt to the device on which they are being viewed with minimal scrolling & zooming required. RWD has become standard for most websites nowadays and is also a factor in search engine ranking. So if you haven’t already, for your next website redesign–go responsive!
