Your website is essentially your company’s digital salesperson. Customers, leads, prospective employees, vendors and other stakeholders will assess your brand based on your brand’s website.
If you’ve been in business for a while, your website may be due for an update. But how do you know when it's time to make the change? Updating your site can be as simple as changing some copy or adding a few new pages. Or, if your site is really outdated, redoing it could be a major project that will take time and money.
The five key issues that we see regularly are, as follows:
1) Outdated Strategy
The website is rooted in outdated strategy (business or brand strategy). While the look of your website does matter, the biggest question is really how your website embodies your brand. Does your brand’s website embody your brand promise, brand position and brand personality? If your business strategy and your brand strategy have changed significantly but your website has not, then you may need to consider creating a new website to replace the outdated one.
Below are three questions that can help you think through this
a. Has your target audience changed since the website was created?
b. Has what you are selling changed since the website was created?
c. Has your competition changed since the website was created?
An affirmative answer to any of these questions indicates, in essence, that your current website doesn’t reflect your current business and brand.
2) Outdated Brand Look
The look of your brand is a reflection of your brand. It is a first impression. If you feel your website looks dated and doesn’t reflect well on the brand, then its time to get a new Brand website. However, we don’t recommend leaping into redoing the look of your brand without considering whether it really is the time to rebrand. See this for more - https://www.argience.com/post/is-it-time-to-re-evaluate-your-brand
3) Outdated Website Content
The website content and copy is neither magnetic nor useful for your target audience. It may be that your business could get a real benefit by investing in content marketing or inbound marketing. To do this, you will need to position yourself to create customer-centric content by
a) being clear on your audience and
b) creating a content strategy
4) Bad Website Navigation
The website has clunky navigation, so it is hard for website visitors to find their way around. However, difficult website navigation may stem from a lack of clarity on your brand architecture. If you have more than one brand and multiple offerings, then you need to decide whether these brands or offerings should share a website or have separate websites. Website navigation may get very difficult for your customer if you have not thought through your brand architecture and defined website architecture that suits your brand architecture.
5) Prickly User Interface
The website can only be updated by an expert; it may be heavily coded, the interface is clunky or it is in a proprietary interface. There have been major advances in the user interfaces for websites. While you need to ensure that you have proper internal controls and security to protect your website, you may may not really need bespoke website coding and functionality.
If you have an old site, you may be tied to the vendor who built your site, and stuck in the position that no one internally can add new content or even fix a typo. If your vendor is responsive and affordable, your content magnetic, your site look and navigation is good, then there is no need to invest in a new website.
Redoing your website can be a daunting task to take on. However, if any of these signs are evident in your business, it will be well worth your time and resources to update your website so you can reach your goals and build your brand
Looking to redo your Brand website? Get in touch
