This question often comes to mind to business owners who have a website that has been designed a couple of years ago. We will provide 9 reasons why you should keep your website groomed and well maintained.
For us, a website is one of the most important pieces of the company’s public face. It is how your customers can find you on the internet. Also, it is how the world sees you through the screen, and in today’s age, that’s kind of a big deal.
1. The website is the main PR of your company
Before we start, we would like you to think of your website as your PR.
Without positive PR publicity, you are less likely to have a successful business to run. That said, your website is similarly connected to your PR. If you choose to have an intuitive and interactive website that your customers will love, that will bring your business positive feedback.
Read below what other reasons you should consider why you should update your website.
2. It will return more than it costs in the long run
Website owners are the end customers that pay for website design, and they are aware that it is often no small cost. They love their website! It’s their public face, and who they are. It’s a part of your company, your culture, and your brand.
It may happen though, that just a year or two after your new website iteration went live you start to receive an increasing number of sales pitches from website design agencies and freelancers.
You tend to wave them off, knowing that hard work has been put into the development and design of your web page. The point is, the people in this industry will rarely bother to contact you if they don’t think they can offer you something better than what you already have.
Keep in mind that when it happens, you will probably start to create new ideas, and compare yourself to your competitors. Some have a better-looking website, and others are falling far behind you.
3. Fast evolving technology and trends
The thing today is, that technology is evolving rapidly. New devices come into the market, new programming languages, as well as new technologies, and you have to adapt quickly. In that chaotic midst, we find that a website which is 4 years or older has no chance of maintaining that positive public face.
Your customers are starting to turn around more often than not, finding that your competitors have a better presentation of themselves.
This is exactly what we want to avoid! We know that you, as the business owner, are providing a good value for the money and that keeping your customers happy is your most important goal. The thing is, the customers can be swung away by other means. If your product or service is on top of the tree, then your website should be as well.
4. You are providing a service or a product that is not listed
If you are selling a product that is not listed, you have to include it as soon as possible. This is one of the worst-case scenarios that can happen.
As your company grows, with time you improve your line of products and services that you sell or provide. That is one of the key things that should be visible on your website even before they roll out. Your customers should always get the best information about your products and updates on your website, and nowhere else.
This means that updating your content in a customer-related way is one of the most important things you can do. A well-structured website that allows your customers to easily navigate and find what they are looking for is the key to success.
Another thing that comes into play is that your service or product page should be SEO optimized. This means that when someone is searching for your product or service, your site appears on the #1 page on Google.
We don’t want your distributor or rival to appear here! This is achieved by proper SEO optimization of your website.
5. Responsive design
If your website is a bit older, it may perform worse on smaller devices.
According to recent research, mobile website traffic has gone from 35% in 2015 to 53% in 2019. Note that this is a time frame of only 4 years, and the trends are still increasing.
MJ Digital Design has somewhat stabilised at 59% to 60% of mobile traffic.
Most of the widely used browsers are updated in a way that old content doesn’t break or change. They only add new functionalities in the new updates.
Still, the rise in mobile traffic in the last couple of years has completely differentiated how and why the websites of today are designed. The modern website design needs to strongly adhere to the principle of not only that the content is resized and re-situated on smaller devices, but that it makes sense for the end-user to browse your website. They have to quickly and intuitively find the information they are looking for.
That said, older websites more often than not, don’t have an intuitive and user-friendly design.
6. Your marketing campaigns look better than your website
Often, companies focus mostly on marketing campaigns, while their websites are on hold. That is something we often notice with companies that send newsletters, flyers or have an active social media presence.
Think of your business aspects as vitamins.
If you take one vitamin more than the equally important other, there’s a big chance your system isn’t going to work properly or fully exploit its resources.
Be coherent in all your business aspects, and it will go a long way.
7. Security
There is a big chance your website will be run on content management systems (CMS) for your convenience. Having that special someone that will take care of the website’s heartbeat is crucial.
Every software or even a programming language comes with their inherited security gaps. When that gap is exposed, you must install the available update as soon as possible. I know it may seem far fetched, but your site can be easily compromised or hacked by uninvited misdoers.
You can check out the biggest and well-known security breaches here. The reason here can be a direct attack or someone that is massively launching malignant attacks on outdated websites just for fun.
That person can be an employee or you can hire an agency to take care of your web presence’s health.
Backup strategies are one of the most important aspects of this. You need to have a reliable hosting partner who will provide automatic backup solutions as frequently as possible. It’s a good practice to manually backup important things (databases or complete hosting directory) from time to time as well.
Since we are mostly working with WordPress, many plugins can help protect your site from automatic bots and robots, without weighing down your website.
8. Simply SEO
As we already mentioned in this article, web and real-world trends change.
The keywords and queries that once were the top searches, fade in their activity. One of the major facts here is that Google loves fresh and updated content. This means that a static, never updated website is likely to fall in rankings.
Example! A newspaper from yesterday will give you updated information rather than the one from 2016, right? You can already see the point here. Content authority fades with time.
A complete, professional redesign is sure to bring you the fresh SEO air your website may need to put it in the top rankings for your important keywords. Of course, this will take some time.
Depending on your incoming traffic (organic, social, referral,..), it can take up to one month for the page to gain a good chunk of authority.
9. Digital transformation
The term digital transformation has started to get a lot of popularity during the last couple of years, and it’s no wonder why. The business world has started to shift towards the use of the Internet since the beginnings of the world wide web.
With the recent soar of mobile device usage and the necessity of being available wherever and whenever you are, has only strengthened its importance
Simply put, it’s a process where existing businesses shift their dealings online. It can also be used as a necessity for new businesses to adhere to emerging technology’s opportunities.
It allows for, among others: Stronger market presence, automation and lowering of operating costs, remote working possibilities, eCommerce implementation, and much more.
Since the process is only strengthening as time goes by, there is little to say that the digital presence of businesses is of the critical impact to their performance. This is why having a proper website strategy in place is essential.