1. Your website is no longer ‘doing anything’ for you or your business
At the end of the day, your website is supposed to be your business’ leading edge – available 24/7 365 days a year!
Technology changes so fast these days it’s really hard keeping up!
If your website is no longer performing as you expect then maybe you need to look at the reasons why this is happening.
If it turns out your site/blog is just suffering from the good old ‘left-behind syndrome’ then perhaps an update/redesign is what it needs to revive it!
Things you should be on the lookout for include key phrases (ending in ‘ability’!) such as:
- a. Accessibility – Making your site usable by everyone, including those with disabilities or restrictions
- b. Usability – How easy it is for users to meet their goals using your site.
- c. Visibility – The position of your site in search engines or directories.
Start having your website to start doing something for your business’s success today!
2. Your audience is mobile but your site is not.
The mobile and tablet market has exploded in popularity and is not slowing down, which means that people increasingly browse websites on devices other than desktops and laptops.
Your website must cater to your members while attracting potential members, no matter the device they use.
Investing in responsive design or a separate mobile site is a must-have for any website these days.
Make your site visible for your audience even when they’re on the go!
3. Your website has no clear goal
Would a visitor coming to your website for the first time know exactly what you wanted her to do when she got there? Would she see a clear, concise message right away? Would there be a clear call to action? Or maybe it would be a bit more complicated, maybe a whole lot of text, maybe a bit muddled.
When a user first arrives at a site, there should be clear headlines, concise body copy, and a clear call to action.
The homepage for your website is like an advertisement, and should have the same basic pieces, headline, body copy, call to action. All of your navigation should be secondary to this.
Text on the page is good, Google likes it. Descriptive body text is best. Text that talks about your website and the products and services that you offer is better. If you’re an organization selling memberships, text that talks about your value proposition to your members is best.
Don’t waste pixels on graphics that don’t get your message across and don’t waste your breath on text that doesn’t drive your user toward a goal.
Set up clear goals for your website that get you better results!
4. Google doesn’t even know you exist
Google is smart, but it can’t read minds – yet.
You need to write your content in a way that you clearly communicate to Google what is important, and what is not.
You can do this through the subtle language of semantic markup, the far more subtle language of link balancing, or the comparatively blunt tool of robots.txt, but the one thing that is for certain is that you cannot do it with words that are in text, or content that is loaded in from an external source, be that flash or JavaScript.
Google, and similar services (Bing, Yahoo, etc.) are increasingly the sources that people use to get their news and information. If Google doesn’t know about your site, then it can’t send traffic to your site. If Google isn’t sending traffic to your site, then you’ve got some pretty big problems.
Get your website found on Google and other search engines!
5. Your site was designed several years ago
Everything is on the move – you, your company, the world.
A static website with no interactive elements and dull, unchanging content is outdated and affects visitors’ impression of your brand.
Web standards and devices change regularly, requiring you to keep up with new versions of HTML or moving away from old concepts such as using Flash, which is not mobile-friendly.
An older website also may mean there are pages you aren’t using or pages you need that don’t exist.
Give your website up-to-date with a fresh, new look!
FREE Bonus Tip:
Is Your Website Too Difficult to Update?
Having a website that is tough to update is like having plants that are hard to water. Put another way, making it difficult on yourself is the surest way to be confident that you won’t do it.
Gone are the days when you’re forced to rely on a cumbersome process to update your website’s content. These days, many content management systems deliver powerful features that busy, non-technical people can utilize without wasting time or money.
If you don’t have a way to quickly, easily, and safely update the content to your website, then chances are that you don’t do it. If you don’t update your content, you’re likely falling being competitors that are updating their website on a regular basis and keeping it fresh.