So you’ve finally decided to get an update for your old and weary website? Remember, a lot goes into designing your website. However, it is also true that a new site comes with fresh opportunities to improve SEO, get new leads and increase your conversion rates.
Your website redesign checklist should should hence carefully be drafted and considered during the rebuilding process.
Start by considering a few key questions.
- Does your current website really meet the mark?
- Or do you require a complete website rebuild to rank high on search engines?
- Are there any possible conflicts between web developers and SEO strategists during the designing of a new website?
- What are the disagreements that occur among teams that are working to manage business websites?
Does website redesign even matter to digital marketers?
The answer in short – YES.
Understanding the role of website redesign SEO can take years of experience in the field.
If you are just a beginner in implementing search engine optimization, it would be a good idea to start at the foundation level. This means you learn about how search engines like Google rank different websites and present results for user queries.
This is a vast subject and is not something that is easy to grasp in a short period of time.
However, the first step perhaps would be to understand the reasons why you need website redesign SEO services. Following section enumerates various rationales for website rebuilding.
11 Reasons Why Your Website Needs To Be Rebuilt
There are certain mistakes that web designers who are not experienced in SEO make. These mistakes can affect usability, readability, crawlability, and other important aspects of your website.
They can also affect the ease with which users are able to find and access your website.
Although these mistakes are surprisingly common among new businesses and small companies, large companies are not exempted from making them.
Here are some important SEO related reasons why you may need to rebuild your site to boost your online presence:
1. Your Website is Not Mobile Optimized
We live in an era of multiple devices. No longer is your website only viewed on a desktop. The number of users accessing various websites on their smartphones far exceeds those on desktops or laptops.
Having a website that is not mobile-optimized is one of the biggest mistakes you could be making for your business.
According to a report by Salesforce, “83% of mobile users say that a seamless experience across all devices is very important.”
People want information at their fingertips, and if your website is not able to present that information well enough on their smartphone devices, they will try to find it somewhere else.
If this is the case, you will need to rebuild your website in a way that looks consistent when viewed on different devices such as laptops, tablets, and mobile devices.
2. Your Website Takes Too Long To Load
Your site speed is one of the main reasons why users decide to stay on or leave the website.
According to a report by Kissmetrics, “73% of mobile internet users say that they’ve encountered a website that was too slow to load“.
Additionally, 40% of users claim to leave a website if it takes more than 3 seconds to fully load.
If your site speed is slow – even by a couple of seconds – you could be losing out on visitors and potential customers. Your SEO also takes a direct hit due to this. Various reasons like poor website maintenance could cause this to happen.
If you feel your website is taking time to load, it could be a good idea to consider a website redesign.
3. Your Website is Faulty
Websites that have tons of broken links, obsolete campaigns and offers, or a layout that is not ideal for the latest browsers are seldom regarded to be reputable by users.
Even if your website is not entirely broken, it is possible that most areas of your site could be updated in some way or the other. It needs to be checked if some of your links are pointing to pages that no longer exist, or your overall website design is in need of a facelift.
Whatever the case may be, a website redesign SEO is always recommended, especially if your website is more than a few years old.
4. Your Website Does Not Have Ease Of Navigation
There can be many indicators that show that users do not find your website easy to navigate. These include:
- Hamburger menus, although convenient, are not too easy to use or understand.
- Accordion menus
- Menu options that do not link to appropriate categories
- Not using appropriate filters to help users find what they want easily
If your website is not easy to navigate, people may get frustrated.
Imagine this. A visitor has landed on your page looking for a particular piece of information but is not able to figure out the category of the page that it is located in.With thousands of websites in your niche available, it won’t take much to push a visitor out of your site and into one that has better navigation.
A website rebuild will help you direct visitors to the right pages and help him or her find exactly what they are looking for with ease.
Remember, it is all about USER EXPERIENCE. Make your customer’s site navigation journey comfortable.
5. The Website is Not Intuitively Designed (It is Not User-Friendly)
Following bad practices make it extremely difficult for users to understand how to perform certain actions in times of need:
–Extremely long pages that are hard to scroll to the bottom
–Huge images at the beginning of the pages that put off the reader
–Not using Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG)
–Not providing alternative text for the images on the page
–Poorly written URLs
–Image sliders or carousels that increase the loading time of the webpage
-Not following a well-defined heading hierarchy (H1, H2, etc. tags)
-Having more than one H1 tag on a web page (this includes your website’s logo)
-Not paying attention to things such as alignment of images and no-follow/ do-follow links
If one or more of these have been analysed as problem areas for your site, a website redesign + SEO is what you need. If your website is not intuitively designed, you can consider a rebuild so that you can ensure better overall user experience.
6. Your Website is No Longer in Line With Your Marketing Strategy
As your business grows, so should your marketing strategy. Sometimes, there is just so much going on in your business that you tend to neglect your website.
In order to make your site relevant, it is important to constantly upgrade and consider a website rebuild. You can choose a more fluid and responsive theme that portrays your brand in a more fresh way to your audience.
Review your marketing goals and build your site in a way that reaches those goals. These goals could be increasing your traffic, lead generation, marketing a new product, or any such task.
Use a website builder like Elementor to help you design your website just the way you want it, with the right call to actions and sign up forms at the right places. This will automatically increase your conversion rate and help you reach your audience more efficiently.
It is also important that you update your website regularly so that you have a better chance of achieving these goals.
7. Your Sales Funnel Is Not Optimised
Your website plays a huge role in sales. It is created with the purpose of creating a good impression in the minds of visitors and providing them with all the information they need about your business.
To provide your users with the ultimate buying experience, it is necessary to optimize your sales funnels according to your ideal customer.
This will ensure that they move on from point to point in your sales funnel and finally make the purchase.
In order to do this effectively, you will need to understand the goals and behaviours of your customers through thorough research. You can use charts and other graphical representations to depict the journey that your buyers are on and how you can lead them from step to step.
8. Your Website Has Out Of date Third-Party Tools
A lot of websites use third-party tools such as various plugins for social media sharing, eCommerce, and pop up forms.
These tools help your website in many aspects, but if they are outdated, they can affect your site speed and SEO.
Make sure that your plugins are updated so that your website is running smoothly with them.
A website redesign will allow you to install only the latest plugins that keep your site fast and up-to-date.
9. Your Conversion Rates Are Not Good Enough
Your website may be functional, clean, and beautiful. But if you are not getting the results that you desire for your business, there’s no point.
Your website should always be in line with your business goals. Study your website’s conversion rates carefully.
Is your visitor-to-lead conversion high enough?
Are your call-to-actions clear and compelling?
Are you providing enough value on your landing pages and blog posts?
Is your content getting people more curious about your business and what you do?
Does your website reflect the voice of your company?
When you ask yourself these questions, you will be able to better plan out your website rebuild and achieve your company goals faster.
10. Your Website Has a Slow/Heavy/Bulky Theme
If your website was built on a theme that is bulky, it can greatly reduce your loading speed.
Other problems that occur when you have a heavy website theme are lesser accessibility, half or incompletely loaded web pages, and poor search engine rankings.
When you decide to rebuild your website, you can avoid making this mistake.
There are tons of free and paid themes available for your website, so take the time to research and find one that is lightweight without too many useless plugins or javascript.
You can also use website builder tools such as Elementor so that your website looks the way you want it to, without having too many unnecessary plugins.
11. Your Web Pages Are Too Hard to Access
Ensure that all your important web pages are not more than two to three levels deep in your website. What we mean by this is that your web pages must not be too many clicks away from your home page.
Have a lesser number of subfolders on your website so that all your content is easily accessible.
If you feel your website needs to be redesigned or rebuilt, you can chart out a plan for all the folders and subfolders in your website and ensure that your users can easily find all the content they may be looking for.
What you need is a complete website redesign and SEO.
When you have a solid foundation for your website, nothing will be able to shake it. You will be investing in a website design that will turn tons of visitors into valuable, paying customers who are in love with your brand and service.
A strong team of experts (including design team and SEO specialists) who work together will be able to deliver the results that you expect, although it may seem to take longer. Even so, one thing is for sure – it takes an experienced team working in harmony in order to build a successful website.
A strong team can do exactly that for your business website!
