14 REASONS TO KEEP YOUR WEBSITE UPDATED

 There is no better or more cost-effective way to advertise your business than on the World Wide Web. The trick, though, isn’t just having a website, it’s developing the website to ensure it’s driving business growth.

There could be many decisions that go into updating your website and best website development services in Mumbai have broken down our 14 key reasons into the following categories:

• Design
• Marketing
• Usability
• Time
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DESIGN

1. Visual Appeal

When people visit your site, they see it as a reflection of your organisation. If your site looks professional and is loaded with useful information readers will see you as an authority and expert. Likewise, if the site looks poorly designed and structured and/or out-of-date they’ll make the same assumptions about your company. The website should highlight your product and/or service and the layout should look harmonious and consistent.

Has your content got dates on it – blog posts, events, and similar? It makes sense to remove or update out of date content. As websites mature and grow, it often becomes apparent that certain parts just aren’t working well anymore and are becoming outdated. An obvious example of this is the use of flash.

2. Responsive & Mobile Friendly

We’re spending two hours online on our smartphones every day; twice as long as laptops and PCs. If you factor that with the upcoming mobile-first indexing update from Google, ignoring the mobile market is a very risky business. It’s now considered the common practice to make a website mobile-friendly (responsive design). In conclusion, if you haven’t updated your website in a while the chances are that you may be driving mobile users and potential customers away.

3. Technique & Coding

Is your website browser compatible? Is your source code valid (HTML and CSS)? Does your website meet the basic web standards? Is the technique and/or (version) programming language outdated?

An important factor you should consider is the increase in usability in web design. Every year web standards change radically and techniques to build websites become more advanced to comply with the latest standards. If your site was developed several years ago, it probably has a lot of unnecessary HTML code and may be slowing down your website loads speeds – which may, in turn, impact your ranking in the Google search results.

4. Stock photos

When building your website, it’s important to only select components that will positively impact the objectives of the website. One aspect of a website where this is especially true is photography.  Does the use of images on your website accurately reflect the business message you are trying to present?

If you are going to include images on your site, ensure they are correctly optimised for the web so as not to impact your site speed. Also, ensure any photos used are sourced from reputable stock sites or are the legal property of your company.

MARKETING

5.      Effective use of calls to actions

Many dated websites lack effective calls to action that convert users to customers. Is your USP and call to action highlighted clearly on every landing page? Are they interesting enough to persuade your visitor to complete the desired action?

 6.  Measuring Effectiveness

An old website may not be equipped with the necessary tools that will help you measure how effective your online presence is. Examples of this include heat mapping, conversion tracking & user recordings. Nowadays, there is an assortment of online tools you can invest in to help you measure what works and what doesn’t on your website, right down to the minutest detail. However, to use those, you will need a modern website.

7. Content

The first impression of your website would be the overall layout, but the reader is visiting your website because they are looking for useful information. The content of a website should be considered to be the most important thing, as it helps in determining how effective a website is. Fresh and unique website content is a very important factor in encouraging people to revisit your site more often.

8. SEO & Website Update

Just like a website your digital marketing and SEO could need a refresh. If you don’t update your website it’s sure to fall in the search engine rankings. Search engines regard websites with the most recent content as the most relevant to web users. Your content might be gold but if it’s the same content as it was 5 years ago then search engine crawlers might not think it is as relevant anymore.

The redesign also gives you a chance to rethink your keyword targeting and the overall conversion rate of your website. The way people search and how they search has changed dramatically over the last few years, even truer with the explosion of smartphone devices now in use.

USABILITY

9. Provide easy navigation.

When we talk about user experience (UX), we are referring to the totality of visitors’ experience with your site—more than just how it looks. UX includes how easy your site is to use, how fast it is, how easy it is to find information, and how little friction there is when visitors try to complete whatever action it is they’re trying to complete. Your website navigation should focus on nudging the right visitor toward the must-have experience.

10. Is your bounce rate favourable?

The definition of bounce rate is the percentage of people who arrive on your site and leave without visiting a second page.  Are your visitors just leaving as soon as they land on your site? How does your website compare to estimated industry standards? 

You can monitor the bounce rate on your website through Google Analytics. Either as a  website whole or on a page by page basis. Look at the bounce rate in the following areas: 1) location; 2)  device; 3)  new vs returning visitor; 4) medium through which users come to your website. If an alarming amount of users bounce you may need to rethink your website, SEO, or digital marketing strategy.

11. Website Speed

Your website’s loading time is a major factor in people either staying or leaving the site and never returning. 

TIME

12. Easier to update the website

You should be able to update your website yourself. An up-to-date website based on a content management system such as WordPress makes it easy to administer, avoids any messy code, you simply write in what you want in an organized fashion. The Web design industry is constantly working to improve itself. This includes keeping layout designs fresh, updating blogs, refreshing imagery, and pushing out timely promotions and advertisements.

13. You’ll reduce your risk of getting hacked.

Stories of websites and social media feed getting hacked are becoming more and more frequent. Security flaws can rear their ugly heads on any website, new or old, but the likelihood of security flaws affecting an older website is much greater as it relies on older less secure coding and technology.

14. Website Integration

For the vast majority of businesses, integrated websites are essential for delivering the requisite service levels. Your customers will expect access to a blog, contact form, support form and if applicable, shopping functionality, all on one easy to use the website. They will require a single login and rapid access to accurate and timely information at all times. Integrating your site with your back-office order fulfilment, tracking, billing and CRM systems such as Sage, MS Dynamics, or Salesforce reduce the likelihood of mistakes and confusion. A website refresh is a perfect time to find ways to save admin time and improve customer service.

CONCLUSION

In summary, the above information highlights the most important and most common signs to look out for when you want to know if your site is becoming an “old hat”. Although there may be other signals that you need a website update, there should be enough here to guide you on the right path.