8 Signs Your Website Needs Redesigning and What To Expect

Has your company been considering a website redesign? If you’re like most businesses, chances are you spent a lot of time and money for a web designer to design your original website. And whilst it’s served you for a little bit, there’s no point in your business having a website that isn’t doing its job anymore.

There are plenty of reasons why your website isn’t working as it should. It could be running slow, or it might not be converting anymore. Or maybe your company has outgrown the current platform? Your website is an asset to your business, so it’s important that it’s well thought through and performs well.

We have a team of dedicated web designers in Melbourne who take careful time and consideration when it comes to website redesign. We’ll get to the bottom of what’s not working with your current website, how you’d like the new one to look/function and, of course, do all the technical stuff for you.

To help get you started, we’ll have a look at the key signs your website needs redesigning and exactly what you can expect from the process.

 

8 Signs Your Website Needs A Revamp

The biggest sign of your website not performing as it should be is that it’s no longer bringing you customers and making you money. But there may be many different reasons why this is happening.

Here are 8 tell-tale signs your website needs a revamp:

 

1. It’s Running Too Slowly

Not only is this a reason for potential customers to get frustrated and bounce from your website before it’s even loaded, but page speed is also important for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

Google uses your Core Web Vitals (such as speed) in its algorithm. So a bad score could negatively affect how your website ranks.

 

2. Poor User Experience

Poor UX is one of the main reasons why people come to us for a website redesign. It’s only natural that your website has grown over the years. New pages have been added, and the structure has shifted.

But this often leads to a messy website and users not finding the information they’re after. This is particularly true if you’ve chosen a simple theme or gone for a package deal.

Our website designers in Melbourne can create a unique sitemap for your website that has UX at the core. This leaves room for expansion so you know your customers can navigate around your site happily.

 

3. Plugin Problems

Older websites are less likely to be able to run new plugins as effectively. This can slow down your site and lower the security.

When you add a new feature to your site, you may need to add a new plugin. Rather than finding a plugin that can cover multiple different functions, it’s often tempting to add separate ones, which slow everything down in the long term.

A big part of a website redesign at Elevate Websites is reducing and optimising the efficiency of your current plugins. We’ll review them all to ensure they’re the best and most up-to-date for your website’s needs.

 

4. Missing Basic On-Page SEO

Effective SEO is the main way you will get your website to rank (and therefore be noticed).

You might not have thought about SEO when your website was first built. Or perhaps, your website has grown so much in recent years that you’ve lost track of it. But it’s a hugely important part of your business’s online presence.

At Elevate Websites, you’ll be getting an experienced WordPress designer in Melbourne who also knows the ins and outs of how your website impacts SEO.

We’ll make sure each page of your website has a unique title tag, meta descriptions and headings. We’ll also manage the internal linking between pages and ensure photos have an appropriate file name and alt text attribute.

All these things (and more) can help boost your website and get you ranking higher than your competition.

 

5. Your Website Content is Out of Date

It’s quite natural for a company to expand and offer new services. But have you updated these on your website?

That may mean having a new product page or creating a blog as part of your website where you can update content. Regularly posting and engaging with your audience helps to build trust – something which Google likes. You can also optimise for keywords and location, which will help you to rank.

It’s also possible that your website was perfectly organised at the beginning. However, the more content you add and the more diverse the topics, the fewer places you have to post them.

So you might just post it anywhere and that category is filed away as miscellaneous. Redesigning your website helps with site structure, which is good for SEO and UX.

 

6. Poor Performance Across Mobile Devices

There was a time when how your website appears on a mobile device wasn’t that important. In fact, it was a time when we didn’t have phones in our pockets all day (…can you imagine?! 🙂

But nowadays, you can’t get away with a poorly performing site on mobile devices. Google actually thinks that your website’s mobile performance is more important than its desktop one. So a poorly performing mobile version can be really detrimental to your business.

Good website designers in Melbourne will take the time to ensure you have a fully functioning and responsive mobile version of your website. It’s crucial to the success of your company.

 

7. Conversion Rates Are Dropping

Your website is a valuable asset to your company. It has a role to entice visitors to stay on your site and explore your products and services. And ultimately, turn those visitors into paying customers.

If you are a diligent business owner, you probably use reports to assess how well your website performs. This can include components like:

• The number of new visitors to your site.
• How long do your visitors stay on your site (i.e. the bounce rate)
• How many visits are turning into leads (i.e. the conversion rate)

 

Having a high bounce rate means your website isn’t addressing your ideal customer’s needs, or it’s confusing and hard to navigate. Your visitors quickly give up and move on.

And a low conversion rate means you’re getting visitors, but they aren’t transacting with you. This could mean they aren’t filling in the form, calling you, buying the product etc. Conversion rates differ a lot across various industries. But a falling conversion rate is usually a red flag for your website.

 

8. You Just Don’t Like That Shade of Blue Anymore

And that’s OK! Tastes change and it’s only natural that your branding develops as your business grows.

Your website might look outdated, or you might just want to start afresh with a shiny new website. A professionally made and attractive website can boost your confidence and help your customers trust your expertise.

We know how web design affects SEO, but having an attractive website is the first impression many customers will have of your business. And we all know how important first impressions can be.

 

What to Expect From a Website Redesign

And Why You Should Choose Us as Your Web Designers in Melbourne…

When you partner with us to redesign your website, you can be sure that we’ll take you through the whole process – from start to finish.

Here are some steps you can expect from us to get the best website performance for your company.

 

Step 1: Assess Your Current Website

To improve your existing website, we first need to understand why it isn’t performing as well as you’d like.

Doing a preliminary audit will help us assess critical components like:

• The average time people spend on your website.
• The pages they bounce from (i.e. the ones that aren’t working)
• Which keywords are performing best?
• And all the pages that currently receive traffic from your ideal audience.

This helps us get an overview of your current user experience and how well your website performs in terms of SEO.

 

Step 2: Check Out The Competition

A good design agency will assess your company’s competition. This allows them to see what keywords your competition is ranking for, what they’re doing well and what could be improved. Your designer can then discuss this with you and, where appropriate, implement this into your new website.

 

Step 3: Discuss the Direction Of Your Corporate Website

It’s really important to us that we take the time to understand exactly what you desire from your newly designed website. We want to ensure we use the right shade of blue the first time and understand all aspects of your business and what you want your online voice to say.

Things we’ll need to discuss and prioritise are:

• Improving SEO
• Better UX and converting more visitors into customers
• Making it easier to navigate your website
• Improving/updating branding
• Improving the speed of your website

We’ll also compare layouts, typography, colour pallets and the type of images you’d like to appear on your website.

These will give us a good starting block to design the user interface part of your website (the bit users will see rather than the code behind it running it all).

 

Step 4: Keeping You Up-To-Date on Your Web Redesign

It can be a bit of a nerve-wracking process to hand your website over to someone else to redesign. That’s why we think communication is really important.

We’ll happily answer any questions you may have and let you know the progress at each stage of the design process.

 

Step 5: Thorough Quality Assurance Post Development

In our experience, too many website designers want to finish a job as quickly as possible – which often means the quality assurance process is skipped.

We always take the time to make sure your website looks and is working exactly how we planned. From every CTA to page speed, we make sure it’s all correct and improving.

And it doesn’t have to stop there. We also offer premium web maintenance packages to keep your website running smoothly so that you don’t run into the same problems later down the line.

If you want to explore this topic a little bit more, here’s some more information on why web maintenance is important.

 

Is It Time to Redesign Your Website?

If you’ve noticed a decrease in the number of visits to your website and therefore a lower conversion rate, it might be time to redesign your website.

Working with an experienced designer can help improve the UX of your website, make it more up-to-date and ensure it’s ranking higher in search engines. All of these factors will help visitors stay on your site, easily navigate it to find the information they want and click on you in the first place! Contact our web designers in Melbourne today to see how your website and business can benefit from a revamp!