You have a website because you want a digital presence for your business. But what good is a website if it does not present you in the way you want it to? Being involved in branding services, my attention has been drawn to the rising requests for redesigning or revamping a website. This alarm was enough for me to dig into the reasons for this changing website owner’s attitude.

I was shocked to find out that more than 80% of businesses have a website that does not have updated information. Obsolete websites as a result of this is not an uncommon occurrence these days. These changes could be a new physical address, contact information, or new service or product line introduction. This happens because these businesses rely on web designers who are mostly freelancers or small companies.  These cheap service providers mostly disappear when they get better opportunities or shut down their businesses.

If you too are a victim of such irresponsibly behaved website designers, you should consider revamping your website. But this time remember to not focus on their cheap rates but on the quality of service they provide.

The next common reason for most businesses to opt for a website revamp is that they don’t invest in developing a CMS to manage their website content. They think managing their website CMS is some rocket science and often say “We don’t have time for that”. What they fail to understand is that without CMS, they are more dependent on their web designing team. Ultimately they end up in a hunt for a new team who can redevelop a new website or manage their existing one.

So, if you intend to get a website designed or your website is under construction, ensure that you get the CMS as well. Remember with this you will become self-sufficient. Making changes to your website won’t be a problem thereon.

I also noticed that most of the websites are technically outdated. It is unfortunate that website owner or their service providers have no clue about framework updates and version control. These are the things that are meant to be included in the annual maintenance costs. When you ask your web designing company regarding the cost of your Website’s AMC and tell them to give you a break-up, they might explain to you about the domain, hosting, and server management and then give you a cost that is less than ₹3000 or $40. However, they skip the version control part. Without version control, these outdated websites attract malware or get hacked eventually. This finally leaves you with no other scope than to revamp your website.

So, do you think being a business owner you can relate yourself to these problems? Well, if you do, don’t worry you are not the only one on this ship. You should nonetheless realize that you made a mistake in choosing the right team. However, the good news is all is not lost yet. You have this blog as a guide for you. I must advise you to always hire a reputed company that has more awareness in cybersecurity. This will help to avoid putting your investment in risk.

Let me share with you some of the more advanced factors that when you see associated with your website you should know that your website needs a revamp.

1. Problems with Ready Template
2. Not ranking well on search engines
3. Not converting visitors to leads/customers
4. Poor performance

Problems with Ready Template:

Whenever you approach a web designing company to develop your brand’s website, most likely they are going to use a ready template. These ready templates save a hell lot of time and help them deliver your website on time. You may be happy to know that your website development will be done in no time. But what should concern you more is whether the developed website meets all your requirements perfectly. When using a ready template, you need to align your requirements as per the options available within the template. If you feel your requirements aren’t reflecting properly and ask your web designer to bring those requirements to reality, then your web designer gets the advantage of charging you higher for additional development beyond the template offerings.

The above scenario is still acceptable. What is worse is that even though you are ready to pay extra to accommodate your requirements, it cannot be achieved. One would need advanced technical expertise to achieve the requirement within the framework of the template. Therefore, now the only option left for you is to accept the fact you received a broken house and you have to live with it.

But, if you strongly feel you cannot accept something that is substandard, then you should plan to revamp your website. As a serious entrepreneur, you should always prefer getting your website UI designed from scratch with the help of UI specialists who use tools like Adobe XD. Also, read why UI design is super important.

Not Ranking Well on Search Engines:

The next scenario is that you could be an active blogger, publishing original content frequently. However, you realize that you are still not able to gain the trust of a search engine. This is probably because you have a poorly coded website. In this case, it is recommended you hire an SEO expert. If your CMS is developed on the WordPress platform, you have the option to use different plugins to automate some SEO tasks. However, know that there is some fundamental issue if your website is not developed in WordPress or if your SEO experts can’t optimize your website in 3 to 6 months. More often than not the coding of your website has not been done accurately. This, my friend, is certainly a time to consider revamping your website; instead of repairing something that does not have an estimated completion date.

Not Converting Visitors to Leads:

A lot of business people still think a website is just for an identity. But that is not true. However, fortunately, with the coming of digital marketing, a shift has been witnessed in the understanding of people. They now realize the importance of original content and UI design in the creation of a website. For better understanding, let me compare website design with watching a movie. What do you feel when the actors in the movie are your favourite but the storyline is bogus? You think you wasted your time and money. However, since you paid for the movie you could not even leave in between. Similarly, designing a website with proper UI design is not enough. If your website lacks a proper content flow, your website will fall flat on its face when it comes to converting your visitors into leads or clients.

The solution to this is that you work in close communication with your UI designer while the UI design is being worked on.  The content flow plan should be bang on spot so that your visitors have a valuable experience. Also, you should take feedback from different users including your clients, staff and friends/relatives who can understand your business.

Thus, if now you believe your website UI does not bring good User Experience then it is time you should  revamp your website so that you can stop leakage of your marketing budget.

Poor Performance:

Finally, let us talk about the performance level of your website. Imagine you are running ads on Google search engine and you are spending like $3-5 per ad click (cpc). Now, imagine a visitor clicks the ads and lands on your website, only to find  that page is taking more than 10 seconds to load. What do you think will be the outcome of this? Well, if you don’t have any idea, let me tell you. Your bounce rate will be higher than you can imagine. Eventually, you will figure out that you will get nothing out of the money you are investing on Google Search because of poor website performance. Secondly, your landing page experience score will drop which in turn makes you pay higher for every click. Remember, the landing page experience is a key metrics to determine your keyword quality score. You will end up paying more than your competitors for a click because of poor website performance.

So, what you can do right now, is to check your website performance using free tools like Google Chrome Lighthouse or Google Page Speed Checker. Share this performance report to your web developer and ask them to fix. If they cannot help or if you feel this task is quite complex or not achievable, then it is recommended to revamp your website.

Hope, you have become wiser about when you should consider revamping or redesigning your website. Always bear in mind, there should be no compromise on the performance of the digital face of your business. All the best!

Read : risk you have in hiring a cheaper web designer