10 Alarming Giveaways That You Need to Redesign Your Website

You wouldn’t show up to a sales meeting in torn clothes or leave garbage piled up in front of your store. You know how important first impressions are when trying to close a new customer. So why should your website be any different?

Your website is one of the most important marketing tools you have. For some customers, it’s their first and only experience with your brand! And if you don’t win them over, you’re going to drive them away. 

That’s why it’s so vitally important to keep your website looking polished and functioning flawlessly. In fact, if you meet any of the criteria on this list, it might be time to redesign your website. This could mean adding new content or pages, changing the structure of your site, or updating the overall look-and-feel of your brand. 

We know how tricky and time-consuming a website redesign can be. That’s why we offer a full CMS Design & Development service. We plan and build a HubSpot website tailored directly to your business needs. 

Here are a few signs that it’s time for a website redesign: 

1. Your conversion rate is declining

Don’t ask us what your conversion rate should be: the truth is that it can vary so much depending on the type of conversion, what you offer, and other factors. 

The average across industries is between 2.35% and 5.31%, but don’t worry if yours is lower than this. Instead, take a look at your website’s conversion rate over time. Some fluctuation is normal, but keep an eye out for downward trends over long periods.

There could be a few reasons behind a declining conversion rate: maybe your content isn’t as fresh and appealing as it once was, or maybe your audience’s tastes have changed (more on that in #3!). Either way, it’s a serious sign that you should consider redesigning your website to get conversion rates back to your desired level. 

If you’re not getting leads but don’t think a full redesign is necessary, you can always try something from this list of 10 things to do when your website stops generating leads. 

2. Your bounce rate is high 

Your website’s bounce rate tells you what percentage of people leave the site rather than viewing another page. While certain pages (like blogs) naturally have a high bounce rate, you typically want users to click around and spend a bit of time getting to know your brand.

A high bounce rate could indicate that your site:

• Is hard to navigate
• Doesn’t appeal to your audience
• Takes too long too load
• Doesn’t provide the information that customers need or that they were expecting

If your bounce rate is higher than 70%, it may be time to redesign your website. (Psst: Just remember that this is an average stat! Always go by historical data whenever possible.) 

3. Your brand, products/services, or audience have changed 

Your business is always changing and evolving, right? Maybe you recently rebranded, complete with a new logo and a fresh, exciting company voice. Perhaps you’ve launched a new line of products or shifted gears into a slightly different service offering. Or maybe you’ve decided to tackle a whole new market. 

Each of these represent a significant change: one that extends far beyond adding a new page or section to your site. When changing your message, you need to consider a substantial website redesign to ensure that every customer receives a clear, cohesive picture of who you are. 

4. Your business goals have changed 

Even if your business tactics are the same, your high-level goals might have changed. Perhaps you’ve decided on an aggressive new sales goal that will require more leads to sign up for a demo. On the other hand, maybe you’ve decided to ‘niche down’ and focus on one specific area of your market. 

You should consider a website redesign in either of these scenarios, or whenever a significant business goal has changed. You’ll need to change your messaging in order to meet the new goal: once again, a substantial redesign will help customers understand the change while still delivering what they’re looking for.

Have you recently set a new goal in your business, but not sure it’s worthy of a website redesign? Our design & development experts can analyze your business needs and recommend the best approach for your site, including helping you transition to the HubSpot CMS. 

5. You need new functionality 

As your business grows and changes, you might need to introduce new tools to help your customers and keep everything working efficiently.

For example, if your customers are interested in booking appointments or talking to a sales rep online, you should add that feature to your website. Similarly, adding integrations to social media or a CRM like HubSpot can help your team members manage website data and report on goals. 

If there is a process on your website that is painfully time-consuming or requires a lot of manual effort, it’s time to consider redesigning your website and adding in some new features. 

6. Your brand is not aligned across channels 

Each piece of your online presence (your website, your social media platforms, and so on) is part of the bigger picture that makes up your brand. If a customer visits you on three channels and has three entirely different experiences, they’re less likely to trust you as a business. 

That’s why it’s so important to keep a similar tone, message, and aesthetic across every channel (and in-line with physical locations and collateral, too!). If your social media is savvy and fun but your website hasn’t changed since 2003, it’s time to redesign. 

7. Your site is 3+ years old

Website best practices are constantly changing. The somewhat painful reality is that if your website was built more than three to five years ago, it’s probably already out of date. 

Why? First, for technical reasons. Not only are security measures constantly changing, but SEO (search engine optimization) best practices are too. If you’re not regularly checking and updating your site structure and content, you may be sabotaging your chances of showing up in search. 

It’s also extremely unlikely that nothing about your business has changed in the past three years. Think about the points we addressed above: do you have a new message to share or a new audience to share it with? If so, a redesign is overdue. 

Does it just feel like you completed a painful redesign, but your site is already outdated? Let our Hubspot CMS Design experts take care of it for you! We can even introduce you to the concept of Growth-Driven Design: a process that reduces the risk and workload of traditional web design by launching an imperfect (but still new and exciting) website and continuously improving it based on real data. 

8. Your site isn’t mobile-friendly 

Unfortunately, even though it’s 2021, there are still many websites that aren’t mobile-friendly. Since the majority of your customers are using their smartphones to visit your website, you’re actively driving them away if it’s not designed with these users in mind.

Your site should fully load in under three seconds and have a responsive design that is visible and functional on any device. If this isn’t possible with your current site, you need to start redesigning immediately.

9. Your site doesn’t rank well in search 

As we already mentioned, SEO best practices are constantly changing. If you don’t keep up-to-speed on them and update your website accordingly, you might fall into the black hole that is the second page of Google’s search results! Once you land there, your chance of being discovered by new potential customers is dramatically decreased. 

We’re not saying that you should expect your site to show up #1 for every search result related to your brand. But if you can’t seem to properly rank for even the most specific searches, a site redesign may be in order. There’s likely some content or technical issues that are holding you back. 

For more information on what changes you might need to make to improve SEO, check out ‘Eight Hidden Technical Issues that Hurt Your Site’s Search Ranking’.

10. Your competitors are redesigning theirs

Now, we’re not saying that you should redesign your website every time a competitor makes an update. That can too easily turn into a game of catch-up that doesn’t actually have a meaningful impact on your business (and confuses your customers!) 

What you should do is keep an eye on what competitors are doing and consider the impact it’s having on the industry. Are they offering a new service that customers are loving? Does the website have an awesome new functionality that would actually work really well on your site, too? 

If your competitors are making changes that differentiate themselves, perhaps you should do the same and make website changes that will benefit your customers. 

Is it time for a redesign? 

Make sure that you’re putting your best digital foot forward every single time somebody lands on your website. If your business falls into any of the categories above, please do your business a favor and take a moment to consider if a redesign is right for your website.