Most web shops will tell you that it is time for a new website or a new design, that is their business, right? Well, it may pay to listen to that advice in some situations. It is especially true if it has been 3 years or more since the last time you have updated your website if you used a DIY site builder to create your website, or you're trusted a local freelancer/friend/family member and ended up with less than stellar results. These are not the only reasons why you should seriously consider a new website or new theme for your website, but there is a good start.
You may be wondering why your old, free, or donated website is not good enough anymore. After all, you are online now and have a somewhat exposed web presence. That is all you need for Google right? Wrong, here are the reasons your current site is killing your traffic and starving your blog of advertisement revenue.
Your site must be responsive
The fact of the matter is more and more people are looking at your site on more and more types of devices, screen sizes, and orientations. A couple of years ago it may have been a safe bet to just target the desktop user or the mobile phone user, but in today's internet, we need to be more aware that visitors may be viewing a site on an unlimited number of devices. On top of that Google has taken notice of this statistic and has started reducing the rank of websites that are not responsive, especially so when users are searching on a mobile device. It is estimated that around 80% of consumers are now using a smartphone to search the internet, and 47% are using a tablet. That means you could be losing 80% of your traffic because your website is not responsive and no longer shows up in Google's search results.
The mobile responsive design is considered normal now. Most site owners will seek out mobile templates and use those on their current website, but many of these can bring a host of new issues to the front. First, many mobile templates use a separate URL. Which is bad for Google search ranking. Alos, many mobile templates are just not that friendly to mobile users. You could spend all of that time and money on a template only to find out it does not work on a particular version of the iPhone or Android.
The good thing is that with the properly created responsive design you really only need to do it once. The programming used for a well developed responsive website works for all mobile devices and browsers. Regardless of the size, brand, release, or Operating System. Even phones and tablets that have not been released yet will work with today's responsive designs. So, that is one of the top reasons you should look at getting a new website design for your blog.
Your Site Needs more Speed!
Today's websites are loading faster and faster, they utilize tools to reduce the load time sometimes to below a second. In a recent study, it was found that 40% of consumers will leave a site if it has not loaded in three seconds. That percentage increases exponentially as the site takes longer to load. The few people who stay around will not come back the next time they are looking for the topic or product you are showcasing on your site.
How much money do you think those abandonments could add up to? It has been estimated that around $2.6 billion in sales has been lost yearly due to retailers having slow load times. That's a lot of money. How much of that money do you think your old site lost your business? How much do you think your site could have earned you if it had been faster than your competitors?
Your Site needs to be fun to use
We talked about it earlier than 95% of your consumers are thinking that a good experience is one of the most important things when it comes to shopping online. This is more than just fast load times and a mobile-friendly website. You need to have a clean and easy to navigate the site, and above everything else you need it to be reliable and free of errors. If you have clumsy or ill-placed menus, widgets that don't flow well or are not styled with the page or ads that break up the content too much, then your only going to irritate and drive away your customers.
Take a look at your website with a critical eye or better yet see if you can find someone that can look at it and have them list some things that they feel about the website. Does it feel new and fresh? How hard was it to find X product or Z article? You could even do it as a simple survey with a 1 to 10 scale. Make sure to keep the survey short thought to avoid losing your volunteer's attention. You may find the results a little bit less than positive if your website is older, or you may find out things that you completely overlooked that could be preventing your sales from growing.
If you are looking for ways to redesign your website, but need to do it on a tight budget, then contact us so we can walk you through the various options available to keep your costs down and increase your return on investment for your blog or ecommerce site.