The writing’s on the wall; you need a new website.
You’ve put it off for too long now, and it’s time you did something to fix it.
Never fear, as that’s all about to change. Getting a new website doesn’t have to be daunting, especially when there are some handy tricks to avoid the hassle of all that coding and designing.
You don’t need to have technical skills to upgrade a website, as there are other options. Once you’ve sorted your website, you’ll then have more time to concentrate on the important issues, such as filling your pages with high-quality content.
Read on to learn more about why you may need a website upgrade and find solutions to many standard website issues.
How To Determine if It’s Time for a Website Upgrade
Making It Easy With The Bluehost Website Builder
Final Thoughts: 6 Clear Signs You May Need a New Website in 2021
How To Determine if It’s Time for a Website Upgrade
You may have the best business in the world, but it’s no good if nobody knows you exist. A website can help you here, getting the word out on who you are and what you’re offering.
Once your website is up and running, it’s then a case of keeping it updated for a constantly moving market.
But do you update or overhaul when upgrading your website?
The first step in making your decision will be a website audit. What an audit does is examine all the factors that determine the state of your website’s visibility in search engines and overall performance, including:
- SEO optimization
- Website load time
- Bounce rate
- Responsiveness
- Conversion rates
Most companies tend to run an audit between two to four times a year. Smaller businesses can get by managing one every six months. Completing the audit gives you a clearer picture of what needs fixing with your website.
What options are available next?
It could simply be mending a few technical errors and installing some plugins. Alternatively, you may decide that a complete revamp of the website may be in order. A website builder can help you here, and we’ll look at this in closer detail later.
Just what are the signs you need a new website then?
Need a New Website
- To make it cross-compatible
- To refresh your design and boost conversions
- To grow your business
- To meet audience wants and needs
- For security reasons
- To rank higher in the search engine result pages
These are six clear signs you may need a new website or a website revamp. Let’s take a closer look at what they entail.
1. For Ensuring Compatibility
Your website needs to fit modern technical standards.
In that sense, browser compatibility is one issue you’ll face instantly. Customers will be landing on your website through Google Chrome, Firefox and Safari. While it’s crucial you keep in mind the audience your business is attracting and what browser they’re using, it’s best to ensure cross-compatibility.
Making your website cross-compatible means you can view it from any browser.
There are many options for achieving this, the first being a browser compatibility check. A compatibility check involves accessing your website on different browsers.
“Ensure maximum accessibility for all your customers regularly.”
You can fix any issues through coding using Cascading Style Sheets — or CSS — but this can be a little fiddly. Many simply opt for using a website builder. Most conventional builder plugins account for the different browsers, taking the worry of web design off your hands.
Testing whether or not your website runs on mobile devices is equally essential. Your customers must be able to access your business through any device wherever and whenever.
You want to ensure compatibility on mobiles with a responsive design. This design style provides critical information on any screen, such as business opening times and pricing.
You can manage this yourself by coding effectively or referring to a website builder with a built-in responsive website design.
2. For Redesigning and Gaining Conversions
From the first page people land on, you need to let them know who you are.
If your website doesn’t reflect your brand, you’ll see a high bounce rate, meaning more people leave just moments after arriving.
The aim is to engage them immediately, converting potential customers into successful sales. There’s also nothing like a happy customer for good word-of-mouth marketing.
With sharing buttons on your website, your customers can manage your digital marketing for you. Moreover, consider incorporating:
- Social Media like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and Reddit.
- Forums for more in-depth feedback as people discuss your product.
- Email Marketing for subscribers who have provided details on-site.
Several website builders incorporate these social media and marketing features into their designs.
But it’s not just sharing. Keeping up-to-date with the latest trends is crucial too.
For instance, if you’re managing a clothing e-commerce store, then the best marketing strategy is to showcase your clothes boldly from every page. Let your customers know what they’ll be wearing.
You would also need to update the design of your website regularly. For instance, no customer interested in fashion will take you seriously if your website’s style is five years out of date.
3. For Developing Small Businesses
The key here is facilitating growth, gaining exposure and reaching as broad an audience as possible.
A clear, memorable domain name is where you want to start. Your domain name is your website address, and this is important for allowing customers to find you.
It’s also critical you don’t limit yourself, as something like ‘tapes.com’ would have a limited lifespan, with tapes already being an outdated medium.
But everyone remembers the name Amazon.
Next, you want a high-quality content management system. The purpose of a CMS is to manage your web content, with these being a few popular examples:
Another valuable tool for expanding your reach is through a blog. Regularly updating your customers allows you to develop a connection with them. A website builder can help here, adding blogs whenever you want.
4. For Meeting the Audience’s Expectations
You need to make sure the user experience runs as smoothly as possible.
The user journey follows potential customers as they navigate the website from the landing pages they first arrive on. You don’t want any obstacles in their way, which means full functionality.
Don’t overwhelm the user with unnecessary confusion.
Everything must be easy to navigate. Letting the user intuitively know where and when to click is a must. Addressing customer needs in real-time will help you, which many website builders offer.
With constant feedback from your users, you can edit the website live to fit their needs.
5. For Maintaining Security
Keeping your website safe is an ongoing process.
It could be that you’re fighting off malware, which is software designed to disrupt or even provide unauthorized access to your system.
Cross-site scripting is another issue, filling the pages with malicious scripts and upsetting users. Nobody wants to use an unsafe website, so strong virus protection is necessary.
When it comes to e-commerce you’ll need to contend with ensuring secure payments.
One method for managing this is through a Secure Sockets Layer. As it’s more commonly known, the SSL Certificate ensures that a layer of encryption masks the data passed between your website and the customer.
That certificate assures customers that their payment details are safe when processing any orders.
You can either code this yourself or use a website builder with built-in privacy and SSL capabilities.
6. For Increasing SEO Ranking
With the constantly shifting search engine algorithms, it can be daunting to predict where they’ll go next.
Either way, anyone running a business website will want to get their pages listed at the top of the search results. You also don’t want to get penalized by Google, sending your website crashing to the bottom of the listings.
Here are a few general metrics from where the Google search algorithms currently stand:
- Google updates its algorithm roughly 500 to 600 times annually.
- Over 200 ranking signals focus on website functionality.
- Many Google search updates incentivize page experience and usability.
- Using the Google Search Console, you can see when Google last visited you.
While it’s true that keeping up with these changes can be difficult, you don’t have to worry about dealing with them first-hand if you use a website builder.
Making It Easy With The Bluehost Website Builder
Whether it’s a website redesign or a complete overhaul, you will need a new website at some point. It’s just best if you deal with any issues sooner rather than later.
Still, you want to make it as easy as possible, as nobody wants unnecessary work.
It may be your own website, or you could be a web developer looking to advance the prospects of bloggers and business owners. Using a website builder can help, which is where the Bluehost website builder comes in.
With Bluehost’s website builder, you can do the following things without any technical knowledge:
- Make your website compatible and decrease load times.
- Attract paying customers with unlimited image library uploads and design templates.
- Update your content regularly and grow through blog post management.
- Edit your website in real-time, meeting the needs of the user.
- Access free SSL and domain privacy ensuring total website security.
- Optimize your SEO ranking for the best search results.
Final Thoughts: 6 Clear Signs You May Need a New Website in 2021
So now you have an idea of what it takes to create your online venture and keep it updated in real-time. Maintaining a website is an ongoing process, as there’s always more to do.
Once you know what’s wrong with your website the rest is easy.
Whether you need a new website or a website upgrade, try Bluehost’s website builder and avail yourself of the expert-backed tools it has to offer. Building a website without any technical knowledge has never been so easy.
