5 Signs that You Need a New Website

I've been in the website development industry since the mid 1990s, so I've seen the entire evolution of the internet during my career. Websites that were made in the 90s would almost exclusively fail almost every usability and accessibility test. Why? For one thing, new devices are used to browse the web (much smaller devices). For another, we've had 20 years to monitor how people actually browse the internet. These two key facts (among many others) have driven the evolution of website design through the last two decades. Now, there's a LOT of marketing hype from website developers telling you that your website is out-of-date...not all of that hype is true, but some of it might be! Let's look at 5 signs that your website truly is out of date.

It's not mobile friendly
This is the most pressing concern. If your website isn't responsive/adaptive to different screen sizes, you need to ensure it is as soon as possible. Having a desktop layout for a mobile screen means it's an absolute pain to read and navigate - you're constantly pinching, zooming and horizontaly scrolling to read/navigate such a website.

It doesn't have an SSL certificate
OK, you don't need a brand new website in order to get an SSL certificate, but you do need a (slightly different) URL! You need to make that change from http:// to https:// because people nowadays know to look for secure websites. You might think "I'm not storing sensitive information, it doesn't matter!". It matters still. Your public content could be hijacked by a man-in-the-middle and client machines could be looking at content altered by the man-in-the-middle. Ensure that the content you publish is the content your visitors see by getting an SSL certificate. Furthermore, browsers and search engines insist on SSL these days.

Your website isn't updateable
Being able to update your content via a control panel/backoffice is an absolute must. Your target market and search engines love fresh content. How can your content be fresh if you have to post a second class stamped letter to you web developer in order for him to add a page to your website? OK, I might be exaggerating with the second class stamped letter, but it's still a pain to email a third party to make content changes to your website. You need to be able to that yourself, quickly and easily.

Your business goals have outgrown the template you're using
Many websites are developed with templates, and there's nothing wrong with that so long as it isn't restricting your plans. If you want any kind of bespoke feature that isn't possible with your current website, and your current website developer isn't able to give you anything outside the ecosystem of the template you're using, you need a new website, and a new website developer - a programmer that can develop bespoke websites.

Your website is pure eye-candy without any consideration for accessibility and usability issues
There is a problem in our industry. Many so-called developers are convincing businesses to "update" their websites simply because "they don't look attractive enough". Their solution is to develop an image-rich brochure-esque website that on first impression looks rather good, but on second impression, doesn't achieve much. There's no way to grow the site's content, there is little in the way of "call to action", it's just a pretty brochure. You need a website that allows your visitors to be customers to your product/service in some way - so they can interact with it, buy something, ask about something (easily), book something, find out in detail the benefits you can provide them.

Article kindly provided by wensumprint.co.uk