How do you know when it’s time to launch a new website? We get asked this question a lot. And unfortunately, it’s not really a black and white question. Maybe things break every time you try to make a simple text change. Maybe the way the site is organized just doesn’t make sense for your organization anymore. Maybe you just want to add a new blog post or change the headline on a page, but you can’t because you’re not a developer. Maybe you really can’t stand the look of it anymore. Maybe it’s obvious, but maybe it’s subjective.
Times change. Businesses grow. In order to maintain its status as your strongest sales and marketing investment, your website needs to adapt and expand. But how do you know if you need a website refresh?
1. Your Messaging Has Shifted
As a service-based business, for example, it is imperative that your site sell through your capabilities and passion around your projects through examples of our work and solutions that you offer. Your old website may have been focused more on your culture and methodology, which is still important, but if priorities have shifted, your website needs to follow suit.
Content is the backbone of a great website. Content is what engages and informs visitors and keeps them in the pipeline. If your website has generic, thin, duplicate or poorly written content, remove it from your site and update it with fresh, relevant content. Each piece of content should offer value to your readers. And, if your website isn’t converting visitors into leads, there is probably a gap in your pipeline. By refreshing your website, you can reassess your funnel and how to nurture customers through it.
2. You Refreshed Your Branding
Have you given your brand a makeover (big or small)? Your site now needs to reflect your logo, aesthetic, and color palette. Refreshing a website’s design doesn’t always require a brand new site build, when you can easily refresh the front-end theme, but this should be a huge factor in your decision to refresh.
3. Your Technology Is Out Of Date
Is your website over 5 years old? Managing your own website and your own content should be the easiest part of your job so you can spend time doing other things, but it may be becoming a thorn for your team. The truth is, the advancements in CMS technology have led to significant efficiencies from an automation and workflow perspective that should be considered baseline requirements for any website. And, it might go without saying, but if your website isn’t responsive (to mobile and tablet screens) then you have a whole different set of issues you definitely need to address.
4. Your Organic Search Performance Is Suffering
Do you need a more scalable sitemap that includes your unique pages that could be optimized for your core keywords. Also, is the backend of your existing site a few steps behind what’s considered best practices for optimization capabilities?
Communicating with your current clients, prospects, partners and new employees is critical in our world built on…communication. When the hub for your communication is not doing its job, and the tool itself impairs your ability to do what you do best, it’s time to re-evaluate. When it is more efficient and cost-effective to rebuild a website than to keep trying to enhance the existing one, it’s probably time to start exploring a new build.
