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5 Signs Your Website Needs a Refresh

The connection between your business and your customers in the digital world, your company’s website sets the tone for your operation online. Currently, there are 4.95 billion internet users around the world, so having an effective website is key to capturing customers online and ultimately getting them into your stores. 

While undergoing a complete website redesign is a major undertaking, costing money and time, there are a few tweaks you can make to update and upgrade your website. Here are five common signs your website needs a redesign and suggestions for how to refresh your website to solve those issues. 

Visitors Aren’t Engaging

If page visitors aren’t watching your videos, reading your blog posts or making online purchases, you’ll want to rethink the content you’re publishing on your website. 

Do A/B testing to see what types of content resonate best with your online audience. Also, be sure to keep your website up to date with current photos and information. Having out-of-date information makes your company look unreliable and lowers engagement.  

Slow Page Loads

Website visitors don’t want to wait for pages to load to find the information they are looking for and are more likely to visit a competitor’s website rather than wait for your pages to load. 

Talk to your website designer and have them clean up your website’s code and PHP versions. You can also do some of the sleuthing work to figure out what’s slowing down your page with the Google Pagespeed Insights extension, which analyzes your website’s content and performance levels. 

Different Experiences on Different Devices

Online users expect the same digital experience whether they are engaging on a web browser or their mobile phone and want to be able to access your website’s capabilities no matter where they browse. If your website looks different to users on a computer and a phone, you’ll want to refresh the site. 

At the very least, your website should be optimized for mobile use, but it’s helpful if users can find the same information about your company on any platform. Talk with your web designer about ways to optimize your website for mobile use and create the same experience across devices. 

Broken Site Elements

If your website’s links don’t take users where they need to go, they’ll get frustrated and leave your website. The same goes for missing photos, pages and information about your company. Broken links can also negatively affect your website’s search rankings. 

Regularly check that links are working. If you link to any outside pages, be sure those pages are operational and still provide the information you want to lead your online users to. 

Low Page Rankings

If your website doesn’t show up on page 1 of search results, users are unlikely to go to page 2. Only 25 percent of online users click to page 2 when searching online, according to multiple studies. 

Even though the algorithm for page rankings is complicated and ever-changing, there are thankfully easy steps you can take to remedy low page rankings. Regularly update content and link to pertinent pages. Because search engine optimization (SEO) can be so complicated, consider investing in a consultant or expert to help you get your webpage high in the search page rankings. 

For five other signs your website is due for an overall or refresh, click here, and for the five elements every website should have, click here

 

About Lindsey Thompson

Lindsey joined the NHPA staff in 2021 as an associate editor for Hardware Retailing magazine. A native of Ohio, Lindsey earned a B.S. in journalism and minors in business and sociology from Ohio University. She loves spending time with her husband, two kids, two cats and one dog, as well as doing DIY projects around the house, going to concerts, boating and cheering on the Cleveland Indians.

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