Most small business owners start out with great enthusiasm when getting their website designed. Unfortunately what most fail to recognise is that a website is never a set-and-forget component of your overall marketing strategy.
It needs regular upgrading and updating or else it will simply fail to do what it was intended to do- attract potential customers and keep your brand in the limelight! But how do you recognise when it’s time to make these changes and hire a web designer to give your business website a new lease of life? Well, here are a few signs to look out for:
- Your website is snail-paced
Online audiences have very short attention spans and don’t have the patience to wait for more than a few seconds for a web page to load. If your site is slow to load, they will simply click away and move to the next site in the search results. When you opt for a web re-design and update its coding, that will ensure the pages load faster and visitors will be more inclined to stay.
- Your website looks dated
Make it a point to browse some of the latest sites online and see what they have in terms of their overall appearance, the features, themes and design concepts. If your own site is unable to match up to these aspects it means your site is dated. One of the best ways to identify whether your site is in sync with the times is to visit your competitors’ sites and compare those with your own. This will help you identify where your site is lacking and can hire the services of a web designer to make the changes you need.
- Your site isn’t mobile-friendly
This is probably one of the major drawbacks. Today, mobile traffic has outrun laptop and desktop traffic by a significant margin. And so, regardless of how impressive your standard website is, if it can’t be viewed on a mobile device in its full form, you’re probably attracting only 50% or less of traffic than you would if you had a mobile responsive website. In fact, Google has now made it mandatory for businesses to have mobile-friendly sites and slap penalties on sites that don’t fall in line.
Apart from all these things, take an objective look at your website; if you don’t like the way it looks or performs, it’s time to hire the services of a professional web designer to make the necessary changes and create a better impact!!