Websites become dated over time. The design trends change, competitors do something that takes the wind out of your sails, and before long, your website is no longer up to date. You’ve seen it happen – the company that once had a great lead-generating website has fallen behind its competitors because it didn’t keep pace with the times. 

When to think about changing your website at all

If you are considering a website redesign, you probably have a few questions. You may be thinking about refreshing your current site or building a new one completely from scratch. There are many reasons to consider a redesign including:

• Your website isn’t mobile friendly 
• You want to change the overall look and feel
• Your service offering has changed or your business has pivoted
• You want to add new functionality such as e-commerce or forms
• You want to better integrate your digital marketing efforts with your website
• You want to improve brand awareness and reach new audiences through your website
• You want to improve the look of your business, increase conversion rates and get more traffic

If you don’t identify with any of the reasons above, then you probably don’t need a new site. However, if you find that one of those reasons hits home for you, and your site looks dated or is uncomfortable to use, then it’s likely time for a redesign.

If you’ve been in business for a while, your company has probably changed how it presents itself to customers several times. Maybe it’s time to try something new by overhauling how people experience your brand online. If your business goals aren’t consistent with the content on your website, it may be time to rethink things. Because websites can change a lot over time, you need to consider lots of factors when deciding whether you should redesign an existing website or build a new one. We’ll help you with that.

The difference between a website refresh and a website redesign

When it comes to making heavy alterations to your website, there are generally two options for your business: refresh your current site or build a new one, often labeled as a website redesign.

If you decide to upgrade or update your existing website, you can do so within your current platform. This is the less cumbersome of the two processes, but it may not allow you to take full advantage of all of the latest features and functions that have been developed in recent years. When you’re able to keep your current website structure, the platform it’s built on and its core features, this is what we call a website refresh.

Refreshing your site means updating your content and incorporating new elements within an existing framework. This could be as simple as some text content changes to spruce up that messaging you haven’t updated since 2011 or it could be adding a few new images or videos to show off recent projects. Overall, a website content refresh gives you more control over what messages and information your visitors consume when visiting your site, and may lead to higher engagements and lead generation.  If you use a content management system (CMS), such as WordPress, or even a Do-It-Yourself website builder such as a Weebly or Wix, a website refresh could be fairly simple and done within a weekend. However, if your website is inaccessible through a CMS and requires hard-coded changes using HTML, CSS, and Javascript, you’d still require a developer or web designer to help you make these changes.

Building a new website lets you take advantage of all of the latest features, functions, and designs available today without having to rely on plugins or other add-ons from another source. A new site allows you to make the most out of online technology and provides more opportunities for businesses to grow their online presence.

When to consider a website redesign

No matter how great your business is, the Internet has a way of making you look bad sometimes. This can be due to an outdated website design, or even just a slow loading time that hurts the user experience.

Small businesses that have been around for a while might be wondering how they can compete with newer, flashier sites. If you’re thinking about redesigning, it’s important to take some time to look at how your site is doing now.

If you have an analytics tool installed, like Google Analytics, navigate to the tool’s dashboard to get some of the following metrics:

• Tally up the number of visits you get on a regular basis. Are you finding that visits are increasing or decreasing each month?
• How many of these visitors are new vs. repeat visitors? New visitors are great, they represent potential new leads and customers. Repeat visitors can also be great IF you have a retargeting campaign going on or if your site has features that a repeat visitor could find useful. However, if neither of those are true, lots of repeat visitors could indicate that your content isn’t engaging enough or isn’t helpful enough for users to find their answers and feel confident taking the next step with you on their first interaction. Look at your bounce rates. A bounce is what happens when the user lands on a website and never navigates to a 2nd page on that site. This is an indication that the visitor wasn’t finding what they were looking for or wasn’t interested enough after landing on your site to continue spending their time with you. A good bounce rate would be under 60%.
• Look at the time spent on site. Usually, this correlates with bounce rates, however, it’s a good secondary metric to track user engagement. If the time spent on your website is upwards of 3 minutes, it could mean that your content is rather engaging. However, if the average time on site is less than that, it’s likely a cause of users not finding the right content to engage with.

Once you have this data in hand, make an evaluation if the data you collected meets or exceeds your expectations. If yes, that’s great, you’re on a good track and a website refresh may be all you need to succeed. But if you’re disappointed in the metrics or trends you’re seeing, keep reading as a website redesign could save your business. Beyond the metrics, here are some additional factors you should consider before you make your decision:

Your website is slow or outdated

A slow site can frustrate visitors and cause them to leave without browsing or buying anything (remember bounces? This is a huge contributor). If your site is several years old, it may be running on an older framework or server that’s no longer optimized for modern browsers and mobile devices. Older sites may also require more maintenance than newer ones do, making updates more expensive and time-consuming to implement.

A redesign addresses your needs better than an update would. Sometimes outdated technology isn’t the only reason to consider a new design; it might also be an inefficient use of resources to try to shoehorn your old site into a new template. An entire site redesign allows you to rethink navigation and store design from the ground up, addressing your current needs as well as future ones.

Your website is your storefront, so you want it to make a good first impression. If it looks out of date or drab, people will be less likely to stay and shop, or they may assume the business is no longer in operation. A website redesign can create needed separation between you and the competition in both appearance and functionality.

When to consider a website refresh

Despite what some people may say, small changes can make a big difference.

On the surface, it makes sense to just rebuild your website when it starts to look dated. But when you’re in a phase where your business is growing and you’re making a lot of changes on a regular basis, rebuilding your site from scratch every time can be a major time commitment that may not be necessary.

Taking the time to tweak and improve your current website vs. redesigning from scratch should depend on what is most important for your business. If you’re constantly pushing out new content, adding new products, or making changes to existing ones, it might make sense to try some content management system (CMS) hacks rather than rebuilding the site entirely. If you’ve recently made some big changes, redesigned or rebranded, or added a host of new products, then it may be worth taking the time now to redesign your site so it can continue to grow with you.

Here are a few ways where a website refresh can be just what your business needs:

Consider an Update

Sometimes simply updating the website’s core systems or content can be enough. Look around your site, chat with visitors, and do some customer interviews to determine what are the pain points of users. Take this info and create a plan to make improvements over time until you achieve your goal. This could mean adding more pages or modifying them, or updating your content and images. It could also mean updating plugins or even your hosting plan to make your site faster or more secure (the behind-the-scenes types of updates that your user can’t see). Consider what you want the site to accomplish and give yourself time to grow into a new look. If after some meaningful updates the site is still not meeting your expectations,  consider chatting with a website designer to find your path forward.

Tweak your logo and branding

Change your logo and navigation bar. This one is pretty simple: if you’ve changed your logo at some point, you can use a CMS to update your navigation bar as well. If you’ve recently rebranded or simply want to give your site a fresh look, this is a great way to show off the new design without having to rebuild the entire site. Additionally, you can make some changes to your footer to provide more site links, contact opportunities, or some additional business info. These quick actions are global site changes, meaning changing it one time will affect all your website’s pages, saving you from having to change every page on your site by hand.

A little-known secret: Opasite offers extremely affordable logo design services!

Refine your content hierarchy

It’s important to think through how you’re presenting the information on your site — especially if you want to optimize it for search engines and social media. This doesn’t just mean making sure every page has a title tag, meta description, and description; it also means thinking about what level of detail is appropriate for each page. Make sure that each page that’s present in your top navigation bar is representative of the most critical information a visitor will want to know. If you have extraneous pages taking up key spaces on your site (like your Privacy Policy, for instance) remove them from the top navigation immediately. Lastly, take a hard look at each page on your site to ensure that the content on the page provides adequate information for the user to make the next action, has an easy way (usually a Call-to-action) to make the next action, and that every page’s content is up-to-date with the most current information about your business, products, and services.

Website Refresh vs. Redesign: The Definitive Answer

Hopefully, we’ve given you the tools to determine whether an overhaul of your site is in order. If it isn’t, then we hope that you’ve found some tidbits that can help improve your current site and keep it current and relevant. Rest assured, there are plenty of potential customers waiting out there for you to show up on their radar, so don’t let your website stay behind your competitors.

There are many services that will help you with a website refresh or a website redesign, so make sure that you stay up to date with the latest trends in your industry and consider using a website redesign service.

Opasite works with a wide variety of small businesses who want to improve their online presence. Our experienced team of designers, content writers, and SEO experts can help you make your website look sharp and function well. This means our clients are more likely to rank well in search engines, which in turn means they generate more leads and sales from the web.

We create service-based small business websites that perform. We handle all of the design, content creation, SEO, and ongoing website maintenance for you. View all our website package perks here.

We believe in a creative approach where we get to know your business and take the time to understand what makes you unique. We then use this knowledge to create a design that gets you noticed and respected as an authority in your field. Come work with us and get the website of your dreams started today!