Should I Redesign my Website?
By Dave Maloney
So you want to get more visitors to your website and you're staring at your homepage, trying to guess what it needs. You start wondering, "Should I redesign my website? Maybe change colors over here? Do I need a new header?"
The technical term for this line of thought is "shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic."
How important is web design in the grand scheme of your business' success? Not very; if your site isn't getting found in search results, a "new look" isn't going to help bring more business.
The importance of web design is really negligible in comparison to the significance of creating fresh content that people will find interesting, optimizing every page for the best search results and promoting your content online to bring visitors in.
Before doing a complete redesign there are a few other things you can check out:
- Page Flow: Have someone (other than you) look at a page on your site to see how complicated it is to find their way around. Is the navigation clear to follow? Can they find what they're looking for?
- Outdated Content: If you haven't updated any of your pages or added anything new in a while, you should consider it. Besides people, search engines also stop checking back to your site if nothing has changed in forever.
- Flash: The fade-in-and-out sure is cool the first time you see it, but if search engines can't see any of it, and not all devices can view it, is it really that worth having? "Simple" can be much more effective.
Stop worrying about the importance of your web design and shuffling those deck chairs. Have a website analysis done and consider your internet marketing strategy. Think about the persona of customer you'd like to bring to your site, what will get them there and what goals you want to achieve once they are there.