A website redesign is like any big project: it gets put off until it becomes absolutely necessary. Here are a few (light-hearted) ways to tell that it’s time.
1. Your site has the word “webmaster” in the footer.
There was a time when people actually referred to themselves as webmasters. Unfortunately, that time was during the first Clinton administration and most of those webmasters were also dungeon masters who lived in their mom’s basement. And while search-and-replace are a start, you should sit down with a web development firm (and by firm, I mean “a legitimate company consisting of more than two people and mail drop) to talk about what your site can and should do for your business.
2. It’s littered with Image-based, pill-shaped buttons.
They look like a Nyquil gel cap: glossy, translucent, and entirely constructed in Photoshop. Which means that changing any one of these buttons requires a work order, takes three weeks, and has to be done by “the webmaster.” Text-based buttons are not only infinitely more flexible and more attractive, they also retain their meaning, so the search engine spiders crawling your site for information will actually find some.
3. Still uses that swoosh graphic from the PowerPoint deck.
Nothing inspires corporate joie de vivre and esprit de couer like an out-of-the-box PowerPoint template. Back in the day, the thinking went, if it worked for the company’s annual meeting, it would work even better for the company’s website. Bottom line: it was a terrible idea then, it’s inexcusable now.
4. Fixed 640×480 tables that look awesome on on your 13” CRT.
There’s a time and place for fixed width tables. And that place is in marketing emails that need to be viewed with an antiquated version of Lotus Notes. Your website should be adaptive and responsive. And your developer should be too .
5. A tiny person walks out of the margin and starts talking.
What do you do when your customers *finally* have broadband? You use that increased bandwidth to pester them with tiny pixelated avatars whose contrived enthusiasm is as big as they are small. Clearly somebody watched Willie Wonka one too many times.
SUGGESTION: Replace that digital gnome with some HD video of an actual human from your company, speaking naturally about your offerings. But remember that while your phone is capable of shooting HD or even 4K video, you might not be.
6. It was built in Adobe Flash.
If you ever doubted that Steve Jobs was a visionary from the future, dedicated to steering humanity away from the abyss using nothing more than Jonny Ives and a slick Keynote deck, the proof is in his flatly stated desire to kill off Flash. — a platform for delivering mortgage re-fi banner ads loaded with dancing aliens and/or dancing babies. So take a spin through your media library and see how many files with an SWF extension are lurking there. If it’s more than zero, it’s time for a new website.
7. Makes no use of CSS or Javascript.
There’s no need to get into a discussion about the numerous benefits of separating style from structure, the elegance of dependent classes, or the enormous power that lays within a few lines of Javascript calling a library. The short version: CSS and Javascript are light sabers and instead, you are using a sharpened stick.
8. The only form on your entire site is on the contact page.
Who cares about conversion rates, lead gen, CTAs, or nurture campaigns? You have that one form. And all its entries get sent to a guy who used to work in IT, who neglected to update the recipient field on his way out the door.
Time for a bit of seriousness. You probably don’t have all of these problems with your site — and if you do, I suspect you have even bigger problems. But the truth is that the Internet is evolving constantly and technology, software, and solutions change. Your site is integral to your business, and you need to put time, effort, and dollars into maintaining it. If you suspect that it’s time to update your site, we can help.
More leads. More Sales. More Results.
Interested in hiring a website design company? We at MINDSCAPE have been helping clients in a variety of industries get more from their websites. You can learn about our web design services here.
