The digital world is constantly evolving. Trends in web design change almost daily and users like consistency when browsing the web. It is so important to update your website every 3-5 years to keep it safe, fast and relevant. Your site needs to stay fresh and keep up to date with web standards in order to compete and convert.
If you’ve built your website over 2 years ago, it has most likely fallen behind in terms of looks and functionality. It might have outdated code that can slow down loading speeds or its responsiveness on different devices.
Here are 6 important reasons why you must update your website every 3-5 years…
1. Visual Appeal
Your website’s appearance is a direct reflection of your business and first impressions are key! It is important to stay relevant when it comes to the latest design trends so that you can establish a strong, authoritative online presence.
If your site looks outdated, messy and confusing with unclear navigation and no structure, potential customers could judge your website poorly and click away. You need your site to highlight your products and/or services in a positive light that encourages visitors to find out more about you, which potentially leads them to hire you or purchase your products.
Updating your site every few years is a great way to refresh the visual appeal and ensure users are engaged and guided throughout your website. If you want your business to succeed, you need to be agile with your visual presentation and website design.
2. Technique and coding
Web standards shift all the time, dictating new tools and technologies for building a good website. Every couple of years, it is vital to check if your website browser is compatible and if your source code (HTML and CSS) is still valid. This way, you can check if your website meets the basic web standards and if the technique and/or (version) programming language needs an upgrade.
Techniques to build websites are becoming more advanced to comply with the latest standards. If your site was developed many years ago, it might have HTML code that is unnecessary and is slowing down your website loads speeds – which may, in turn, impact your ranking on Google search results.
Including modern techniques such as CSS coding will allow your web pages to adapt to all smartphone devices.
3. Security
Hackers are now more prevalent than ever. An outdated website is more exposed to these hackers, meaning they can access the backend of your website and use it as a spam server, which can slow your website down to a crawl and eventually get you blacklisted. This could be detrimental to your business.
To protect your website from hackers, you need to keep your software up-to-date. Your content management system needs to keep on top of any software updates and security patches.
An older website is much more likely to face security issues as it relies on older, less secure coding and technology. This is a big reason to keep your website fresh, updated and completely secure.
4. Site speed
Our attention spans are getting shorter – it is critical that you grab the attention of your visitors within seconds of their arrival to your website. If your website takes too long to load, everything else becomes irrelevant, because users simply do not have the patience and will choose to visit your competitor’s faster loading site.
Updating your website will help improve site speed. Image sizes and page caching can affect load times, and there are ways that web designers and developers can optimise these to significantly improve your website loading time! Aim for a time under 4 seconds. You can use tools like GTmetrix to test loading times once your site has been updated. Even Google is rewarding sites that load faster with better search results placement, so keep in mind that updating your website is also good for SEO!
5. Mobile responsiveness
We now live in a smartphone first society. We use our phones for online shopping and browsing the web, and so it is very risky if your website is not mobile responsive!
Responsive web design is a collection of techniques that allow a website to flex and adapt to the size of the screen it’s being viewed on. Updating your website will allow you to ensure it is fully responsive for all devices – mobile is important and it won’t go away any time soon.
6. Overall user experience
User experience (UX) includes how easy your site is to use, how fast it is, how easy it is to find information and how easy it is to complete certain actions. Outdated websites are more likely to fall behind in terms of user experience. Your user must be central at all times when designing and development your site.
An old, outdated site isn’t going to provide the optimum user experience. So, a redesign is the perfect opportunity to fine-tune your navigation and make experience of your website simple, smooth, modern and engaging.
Does your company website require a re-design? If so, please Contact Us to discuss how we can help you, on Dungannon 028 3754 9025 or Belfast 028 9002 5050.
