Top 10 Reasons Why You Should Consider a Website Redesign

When evaluating your current website to determine whether a redesign is necessary, it’s helpful to consider how the site furthers user experience and your business goals.

For example, can users quickly find the information they want? Does your site make a strong first impression among potential partners or recruits? Is the site frustrating to use because of slow loading times or other technical issues?

In this article, we’ll explore ten reasons why you should consider a website redesign. If you find that any of these reasons apply to your business’s site, it may be time to start discussing next steps for improving your online presence with your internal team or a trusted partner.

1

Not aligned with your current business strategy.

Your website, along with your marketing efforts, should be in sync with your business strategy. Has your firm grown or evolved over the past few years? Have you added new services, markets, or subject-matter expertise? Have you restructured the organization to bring more focus or emphasis on certain services or markets?

If so, there’s a good chance your current website isn’t aligned with your business strategy and no longer accurately reflects your goals.

For this reason, investing in your digital presence is important to ensure it stays aligned with your business’s current position in the marketplace.

Whether that involves updating your existing website with new brand assets or redesigning the site altogether, the important thing to remember is that your site should be emblematic of your brand — synthesizing the broader themes and culture of your business into a compact package that furthers your goals.

2

Not a good reflection of your brand.

Research has found that visitors will form an opinion about your website (and your firm) in as little as 50 milliseconds.

In fact, your website probably makes more first impressions, gives more introductions, and has more follow-up interactions with prospects and clients than your business development staff and principals do.

As a result of these high-frequency interactions, you should think of your website as the first impression that potential partners and recruits will have of your business, meaning you should consider all the ways that your site will impact their opinion of your brand.

Some additional questions to consider:

• When visitors land on your website, what impression does it make?
• What message does it convey to prospects and clients?
• Does it look and feel outdated?
• Is it generic, or does it have any memorable features?
• Does your website tell a story about your company and the compelling reasons why someone should do business with you?
• Does it differentiate you from your competitors?
• Is it dynamic and engaging or copy-heavy like a brochure?
• Is it visually appealing with unique and eye-catching imagery of your people and offerings?

Your website should be engaging and informative enough to answer your visitor’s questions or satisfy their needs as soon as they land on the site.

As noted in data from Forbes, website users spend 57% of their time above the fold (the content that’s viewable on their screen when they first load the site) and 74% of their time in the first two screens-worth of content.

This means that having your site make a strong first impression (especially at the top of each page) is critical to ensuring your site aligns with your brand’s image.

3

Difficult or confusing to navigate.

Intuitive navigation is critical for a modern website.

61% of users say that if they don’t find what they’re looking for on a website within about five seconds, they’ll go to another site, and 76% of users say making it easy to “find what I want” is the most important factor in a site’s design.

It’s not unusual for B2B firms to overcomplicate their menus and navigation, either through unintuitive naming conventions or overly complicated site organization, leaving users struggling to find what they are looking for easily.

However, as the web has evolved, so have people’s expectations for user experience and functionality. Web users today demand an intuitive, efficient experience.

If your menu and navigation are based on last decade’s best practices, you’re losing web traffic and sales opportunities.

4

Not mobile-friendly.

We now live in the age of mobile and multi-screen platforms, with people using a variety of devices — including smartphones, tablets, laptops, desktops, and TVs — to access and view the internet.

With mobile visitors now generating more than 65% of global website traffic, today’s web users have come to expect pleasant online experiences regardless of what device they’re using. As a result, having a website that works well on nearly every device is critical.

Having a website with a responsive design provides a viable solution and has become table stakes for today’s websites. If your website wasn’t designed with mobile in mind, it’s definitely time to consider a full redesign.

5

It functions more like a brochure than a business development tool.

Does your website act more like a tradeshow booth or the person working the booth?

Many B2B websites function like virtual brochures — with basic boilerplate firm information, project or product profiles, leadership bios, and a laundry list of markets they operate in and their services.

You should use your website as a platform for thought leadership and a resource for business development and lead generation. And that means it needs to be planned, designed, written, and developed with content marketing and lead generation at its core.

Put simply, your website should tell a story of why a visitor should engage with your brand, not just list relevant information about your capabilities.

Is your culture engaging for new recruits? What can a prospective client expect from working with you? What are some key differentiators that help you stand out from competitors, and how do you integrate these topics into your service offering?

People buy stories and engage with other people, meaning your website should have a personalized, human-first feel at every touchpoint.

6

Lacks a user-focused site architecture and content strategy.

It’s customary for B2B firms to base the structure and content of their website around their leadership or business units. However, clients and prospects don’t necessarily think of your services, markets, and offerings in the same way you do.

For example, an engineering firm may have a sharp division between its design and development arms internally, but all a client cares about is whether the firm can complete the project in a way that meets their goals.

Put another way, site visitors are often goal- and solution-focused in their intent while visiting your website.

Because of this, your website architecture and content should focus on meeting the needs of your target audiences, answering their questions, and providing them with information that addresses the various stages of their buyer’s journey.

7

Lacks an integrated location for thought leadership.

The average company receives 55% more visitors to its site through content posted onto a blog, which is a great way to provide valuable resources to users, increase traffic, and generate leads.

As a cornerstone of content marketing, your blog should be an integral component of your firm’s website. Your blog can build thought leadership, fuel SEO, propel your social media marketing, drive website traffic, and generate and nurture leads.

Most importantly, a strong library of helpful educational resources can help build credibility among potential partners, establish expertise, and demonstrate alignment between your expertise and the challenges faced by potential clients.

8

Not generating or converting enough visitors to leads.

Attracting traffic to your website is only the first step. The next (and arguably harder) step is to convert visitors into identified leads through effective strategies that prompt action.

Many websites were never designed with a lead generation strategy in mind but rather acted as an online collection of marketing materials. For example, sites without clear calls to action or intuitive user funnels often struggle to convert traffic into form submissions and other leads that can be followed up by business development team members.

To be fully optimized for lead generation, your site must contain premium content, landing pages, lead capture forms, calls to action, and other clear intent funnels to direct traffic to key pages across your site.

9

It’s difficult to manage and update website content.

Is your marketing team frustrated by their ability (or inability) to change your website? Static (not content-managed) websites leave many companies with their hands tied if they don’t have someone in-house who knows how to code.

Even some content-managed websites can be difficult to update or lack the ability to make necessary changes easily and quickly, depending on how they were built.

Your website should be agile enough to adapt to the changing marketplace and intuitive enough for anyone on your team to update and change content.

10

Website traffic and analytics are disappointing.

Website analytics are a great way to determine the effectiveness of your current site.

Is your website traffic down, or has it plateaued? Does your website have a low engagement rate? Is a visitor’s average session time extremely short? Or is it not attracting the right visitors in the first place?

These can all be symptoms of your current website and content not working with your intended audiences.

Many factors contribute to these issues, from content strategy, user interface design, coding problems, and too many plugins to foundational design and development factors that should be addressed with a redesign.

A good first step in any website redesign process is a comprehensive audit of a website and its analytics to determine if a full redesign is necessary or if small changes to the existing site could remedy any issues found in the auditing process.

Curious if it’s time for a redesign?

A modern B2B website needs to do more than exist — it should make a positive and impactful impression on visitors, convey your firm’s differentiating attributes, and serve as a virtual member of your business development and recruitment team.

If your firm’s website shows any or all these warning signs, it’s likely time to consider a strategic, user-focused website redesign.