In today’s digital age, a website is a crucial element of any modern marketer’s strategy.
Whether you are looking to implement a new brand, enhance your digital marketing strategy, or improve security, a website update should be a top consideration. Your website is often the first impression that potential customers will have of your business, and as the saying goes, you only get one chance to make a good first impression.
At Unicorn DV, we asked our entire team to come up with the ten most important reasons to update a website, and here are their responses:
Visual Appeal
When people visit your website, they see it as an extension of your company. A poorly designed, outdated digital property says a lot about the company behind it. To attract potential customers and set yourself apart from competitors, your website needs to be visually appealing and contain useful information that resonates with your target audience.Responsiveness
We live in a society that spends more time on mobile devices than on laptops. With Google’s upcoming mobile-first indexing update, ignoring the mobile market is risky. Responsive web design allows a website to flex and adapt to the size of the screen on which it is being viewed. If you haven’t updated your website in a while, you may be driving away potential customers who are using their mobile devices to access your site. Making your website mobile-friendly has become a standard practice in today’s digital landscape.Technique & Coding
When updating your website, it is crucial to ensure it is compatible with the latest versions of web browsers and meets basic web standards. As websites grow and mature, certain elements can stop working properly and become outdated. Valid HTML and CSS and a current programming language should be used to ensure your website is running at peak performance.Calls-To-Action
Outdated websites lack compelling calls-to-action that assist in converting visitors into paying customers or lower-funnel leads. A call-to-action (CTA) is a button or link on your website that helps visitors become leads by taking specific actions on your property. To evaluate your CTA effectiveness, determine whether every landing page displays your unique selling proposition and a corresponding CTA and if both are compelling enough to persuade your visitor to take action.Effectiveness
With a correctly updated site, you should be able to assess your website’s effectiveness. An outdated site may lack the necessary tools for determining the effectiveness of your online presence. Heat-mapping, conversion tracking, and user recordings are simple and effective ways to judge how well your site is being used. Investing in a variety of online tools that help track what works and what doesn’t down to the smallest details is only effective with a current digital property.Content
Although the overall layout of a website creates the first impression, users typically visit sites to find useful information. A website redesign can help reimagine audience engagements. It’s critical to write copy that engages your audience while remaining succinct, minimal, and pertinent. The most important aspect of a website should be its content as it determines how well it serves its purpose. Fresh and original website content is a major asset to encourage users to visit your site more frequently.SEO Implications
Search engines like Google and Bing penalize outdated properties by reducing organic search ranking. Websites with the most recent content are considered the most relevant. A website redesign presents an opportunity to reconsider your keyword targeting and overall conversion rate. The way users search has changed dramatically in recent years, and it is important to consider the increase in usability in web design. Every year, web standards evolve dramatically, and website development techniques advance to meet the latest requirements. If your website was built several years ago, it most likely contains a lot of unnecessary HTML code that is slowing down your website’s load times, which has become a major contributor to domain
