Website Design

Have you had the same exact website design and functionality for years? Have you ever thought of redesigning it? Are you wondering if you even need to have your website redesigned? Let us help you make this decision by giving you a few reasons below as to why your website may need to be redesigned.

Website Design Trends Change
Like everything else in technology, trends change. The website design trends that looked great 5 years ago may not look great now. In the ‘90s, the big design trend was websites with a dark background and white text. In the 2000s, the trend was Flash websites and animation. What looked good on your site a few years ago when it was first designed may not look great now. Your website may be using outdated design trends. Your website may not be appealing to any potential customers or clients who view it. You could be losing potential customers or clients on a near daily basis because of a subpar website design.

Slow Website
Another indicator that you need your website redesigned is that your site may be running slow. Slow websites often indicate a poorly optimized website. Your image files, JavaScript files, and stylesheets may be too large and not optimized. They may be slowing down your website. In 2016, website visitors are likely to make their decisions on a website and as a result the company owning the website in less than 30 seconds. If they’re spending most of that time waiting for your website to load, you will likely lose out on the chance at converting these visitors into customers or clients.

Website Too Difficult To Update
Some companies designate an employee to handle all the website updates. Oftentimes, these employees have little or no web development experience. They have to learn through free tutorials they find online and even then, depending on how your website was originally developed and managed, this may be so time consuming that the website either rarely ever gets update or possibly hasn’t been updated since you originally paid for the building of your website in the first place. A website that is properly designed and developed will be done in such a way that if you can’t afford for a professional to perform regular updates and maintenance, it will be built in such a way as to be easily updated by anyone within your company.

Site Is Not Mobile-Friendly
As explained in our blog about having a mobile-friendly website, your website may need to be redesigned to be more mobile-friendly. Depending on how unfriendly it is on mobile devices, it may be as simple as some tweaks to the existing website code or a complete redesign. Having a website that is not mobile-friendly is detrimental to not only your website, but your business as a whole. You may be losing potential customers and clients and as of 2015, Google has started awarding sites with mobile-friendly websites with higher rankings than those that are not. If you’re not sure if your site is mobile-friendly, feel free to contact us and we can help you!

Search Engine Ranking Not Great
If it has been a long time since your website was last designed and your search engine ranking isn’t as high as you would like or if you cannot find yourself at all on the search engines, you may need to have your website redesigned. Here at Southern Belle Marketing, LLC, we offer a FREE SEO Audit so you can see just what is wrong with your site and why your site may not be ranked as high as you want it to be or why it’s not ranked at all.

Fresh Content Is Attractive
Speaking of search engine rankings and SEO (search engine optimization), one of the most important parts of moving your website up the search engine rankings is to periodically update the content on your website. Simply sticking content up on the website and walking away from your website without ever updating it again is not very appealing to Google or your website visitors. Periodically updating your content gives the look of a company that is always on the move and always improving itself to give the customer or client the best experience possible. It makes it look like your company cares about its image and not just putting more money in their pockets.

Website Visitors Not Converting
No matter if the end goal of your website is for people to contact you, to book an event/date, or to sell products to your visitors, a low conversion rate is a strong indicator of a poorly designed website. No matter if it’s the look of the site or the functionality, if visitors are not converting into customers or clients, there may be something wrong with your website. If your website is connected to Google Analytics or other analytics services, the stats within these programs may show this to be true as well.

Competitors Have Updated Websites Have you been watching the websites of your competitors? If you haven’t, you should start now! For those of you who have been watching them and have seen them going through redesigns that make their websites not only look better or function better than previous versions, you may be watching as your competitors improve not only their website, but you may be watching as they earn and keep customers or clients that could have been yours! Website visitors may often check out similar companies before offering you their services and if they see your competitors improving while your company chooses to remain stagnant, they may choose them over you no matter how long they’ve been with you.

Southern Belle Marketing, LLC Can Help! Here at Southern Belle Marketing, LLC, we love to help our clients and watch their businesses grow before their very eyes! We enjoy helping them grow so that they can continue to benefit their own clients or customers. One of our primary specialties is Website Design and Development. We work with coded websites using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP. We also work with websites developed on content management systems such as WordPress. Finally, we also work with websites that use e-commerce platforms such as 3DCart and Shopify. No matter if you want your website to continue to use the same technology or switch to a different system or platform, we are here not only to do what you want, but we can also consult you on what we think is the ideal way to go for your company!

Is your website mobile-friendly? Is your website easy to access by tablets and smartphones? In 2016, a website that is not mobile-friendly could be detrimental to your business and to the possibility of future growth for not only your business’ online presence, but also to your business in general. Check out several reasons below for why this is true.

Wide Use of SmartPhones
According to a survey in 2015 by Global Web Index, eighty percent of internet users access the World Wide Web via their smart phones. This means that there are more people accessing your website via a mobile device rather than a desktop device. Websites that are not mobile-friendly tend to be designed with just desktop users in mind which means on smaller devices, font and images will be small and require users to zoom into your content just to be able to read it. It requires them to scroll around on the screen to read the entirety of your pages, causing them to take much longer to get the information they require off of your website. Mobile visitors are more likely to not want to take the extra time to view your content and will move onto another site, possibly your competition.

Google Favors Mobile-Friendly Websites
One of the most important reasons to have a mobile-friendly website is the fact that Google favors mobile-friendly websites over those that are not. In April of 2015, Google started using mobile-friendliness as a ranking factor on mobile devices. While your non-mobile-friendly website will be fine on Google Searches via a desktop search, your site’s ranking will not be as high on a mobile device’s Google Search. Your ranking on search engines such as Google and Bing! are very important and vital for your company and its potential for future growth.

Your Competitors May Not Be Mobile-Friendly
While it is not true in every instance, chances are high that your competitors currently have websites which are not mobile-friendly. Making your website mobile-friendly will give you a leg up on the competition and put you ahead of them in the game. This gives you more share of the mobile market over your competition. For those whose competitors already have mobile-friendly websites, you may be currently losing customers or clients to them every single day and had no idea. Even those companies who do have mobile-friendly websites do not always have properly designed and optimized mobile-friendly websites which is another chance to do better than your competition!

Avoid Future Website Redesigns
While it is true that your website’s look will need to be occasionally refreshed, a properly designed and optimized mobile-friendly website can save you the time and money required to redesign your website as new technology is born. The coding and concepts behind mobile-friendly design revolve around making the site resize based on the size of your device’s screen. A mobile-friendly design uses the same website no matter if you’re on a desktop computer, tablet, or smartphone. As new technology is born, a mobile-friendly design will focus on the size of the screen and not the kind of device you are using.

How We Can Help
At Southern Belle Marketing, LLC, we strive to get things done right and done the first time. One of our specialties is Web Design and Development. Our websites, no matter if they’re a standard HTML site, a website designed for a content management system such as WordPress, or a website using an e-commerce platform such as 3DCart or Shopify, all are designed and developed to be mobile-friendly. We want your website to look and function great no matter if you’re on a desktop computer, tablet, or smartphone. We know that you need a fully-functional website no matter how it is accessed and one that makes your company more enticing than your competition. Finally, we know how important it is to get your site as high up on the search engines such as Google and Bing! through SEO (search engine optimization).

Contact us today so we can help you achieve the success you and your company deserve!