Is your website starting to show its age?

A website isn’t just a fancy digital brochure. You can add to it and change it at any time. In most cases, a website can come back to life with a few targeted updates focusing on your customers and their needs.

If your website has never performed, then you probably don’t have the right digital marketing resources in place. You not only need to capture traffic for the website but convert that traffic into business value.

But what happens when a formerly effective website starts to decline?

Sometimes, it takes more than a few tweaks to get your website back to where it needs to be. Just like anything else in life, the signs of age can creep up and aren’t always obvious. By the time you’re taking stock, you could have lost thousands or even millions of dollars in potential value from your website.

A complete website refresh usually means making significant changes to a website design. These can go hand in hand with a reimagining of your entire brand. At the same time, it may be necessary to fully re-engineer the technical “back end” of the website, on which its public performance depends.

Is it time to consider drastic measures?

Look for these three signs:

1. Your Website Design Is Crawling with Bugs

To make a positive impression, a website needs to look great and be easy to use. Over a span of years, even features that were once on the cutting edge stop working the way they’re supposed to. Issues gradually accumulate: Outdated links, missing images, and malfunctioning forms make your website look broken.

In the most serious cases, features like caching and CDN that were contributing to snappy performance for your website give out – but you might never get notified about it. When your website slows down, visitors flee. (Research shows it only takes one second for them to wonder if something is wrong.

To check your website for bugs, drop in and pretend you’re a customer. Come up with goals you want to achieve on the website, and see how easy or hard they are. Conversely, check your data analytics for the pages with the highest bounce rates to see exactly where people get fed up dealing with your website.

2. Your Website Isn’t Moving in Online Search

Google has made it clear that only websites that meet the highest standards can compete in search for 2023 and beyond. The introduction of “infinite scrolling” on desktop means if performance issues drive your website out of the top ten results, you’re even less likely to be found than ever before.

Many things can undermine your organic search traffic strategy – including not having one. But when it comes to your website, there are three major culprits: Speed, data security, and mobile responsiveness.

We’ve touched on speed, so let’s talk about security. Every modern website must have a valid SSL security certificate. Even if you don’t collect any data from website visitors, there are no exceptions. These certificates can go out of date without warning, so be sure someone is responsible for them.

Google now looks at the mobile version of your website first when assigning search ranks, so it is crucial to deliver a mobile-friendly experience for smartphone and tablet users. Your marketing agency can help you update your website design with a “responsive” theme that adjusts to different display sizes.

3. Nobody Else’s Website Design Looks Like Yours Anymore

Just like everything else, websites are subject to trends. Throughout the 2010s, everything was “flat.” Since 2020, you might have noticed virtually every illustration of a human figure is purple, blue, or green.

These might seem like quirky, ultimately meaningless things. But if you are catering to Gen X, Gen Z, or Millennials, then your average customer looks at thousands of websites a month. This massive amount of passive exposure teaches them what to expect from a professional and reliable website.

To excel, your website needs to send the right trust signals. That can include things like showing off your industry certifications and payment logos. But it’s also subtler: Your navigation, design, colors, typography, and overall aesthetic need to make sense in the wider world of websites.

Sometimes, the best way to do that is with help from experts.

At New York Ave, we understand how to combine the right website design with an effective, targeted digital marketing strategy to help you reach your goals. Contact us today to find out more or get started.