Why do I need to consider a redesign?
Times change, industries change, and most importantly, technology changes. Staying on top of current trends and utilizing current technology will ensure you stay on top of your competition. With the large adoption of mobile technology in recent years, now is more important than ever to keep track of the constant changes to technology and ensure that your website looks good from any device. Google now shows mobile-friendly websites higher up in the search results. If your website isn’t made to be viewed on mobile devices yet, you’re missing out on opportunities.
When we are talking about a website redesign, we are talking about more than just applying a new look and feel. A successful redesign will evaluate not only the overall appearance but the navigation and flow of content as well. Keeping the content fresh will be a huge benefit to your search engine rankings, but we’ll talk more about this later.
How often should I redesign my website?
You’ve probably noticed some companies seem to do a full redesign every year, while others will push out a new website every two-three years. To put an actual value on how often you should do a redesign is very difficult because a number of factors are involved such as the industry, the products and/or service you are offering and your target audience.
Instead of reviewing your website once every few years, best practice for maintaining a healthy site is to be constantly re-evaluating it. These continuous evaluations might reveal the opportunity to make minor changes to small portions of the site at a time instead of one large redesign every few years.
Some questions to ask yourself while evaluating the design of your website include:
- Is the content strong enough?
- Is the navigation clear for prospective and current customers
- Does my site cater to current trends within my industry?
Search engine benefits
Search engines thrive on finding new content. The goal of most search engines is to showcase the most current and most relevant sites available to a search query. Therefore, an article posted online a week ago will show up higher on the search engines than an article posted three years ago on the same topic.
SEO is a double-edged sword when it comes to your website redesign though. There are a number of steps to consider when redesigning your website that will allow you to keep your current rankings. The URL is key to your SEO. If the redesign is drastic enough, then the unique page address could change. To not lose your place in the rankings, you should do one of two things: keep the same URL, or make sure the proper redirects are in place with the new URL.
Ultimately, the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mentality does not apply to websites. The internet is constantly evolving and in order to be a leader in your industry, you must embrace constant change.
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