How to Know if it’s Time for a New Website
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It seems with the start of a new year, everyone has their website on their mind and one particular topic keeps coming up in conversations I’m having...
“How do I know if it’s time for a new website?”
Chances are if you’re asking this question, you’re probably feeling a little off about your website. Maybe you’ve lost the excitement you had for it or you could even be feeling embarrassed to show it off.
But how do you know it’s time for a change?
There’s no hard and fast rule for this since our businesses are all so vastly different, but chances are high that if you’re not feeling aligned with your website, your dream clients won’t be either.
To help you decide if it’s time for an upgrade or not, here are some things to consider:
Is your website in line with the level of service you provide?
You’re amazing at what you do and you receive fantastic reviews from your clients, but is your website aligning with the quality of work you provide?
If it’s not, then you’ll likely be killing trust with your dream clients.
Most of us like to snoop around a bit before we make a big investment and hire someone. We want to know more about the person we’d be working with and how they can help us, and to make sure the person is legit and can truly deliver on what we are after so we can feel confident in handing over our hard-earned cash.
Chances are if you don’t love your website or you’re embarrassed to send it out to people, it’s probably not highlighting the level of service you provide and the transformation you can create.
I’m not a very woo-woo person, but a lot of our energy and passion goes into our website, and when someone lands on it, they’ll feel that energy and passion too. If you’re not feeling it, it’s not going to resonate with anyone else, either #hardtruth
If your website doesn’t look professional and high quality like your services, it sets a negative impression for your visitors and plants a seed of doubt that your service isn’t really as amazing as it’s hyped up to be.
Is your website is up-to-date and reflecting where you are in business?
Over time, your business will grow and evolve, and your website needs to grow and evolve with it. If your website no longer matches where you are at in business, then it needs to be updated ASAP!
Why?
Because you won’t attract the dream clients you want to work with for the services you want to provide (hell, you may even be scaring them away with an out-of-date look or info!).
Also, Google doesn’t like static websites that don’t get updated, so it will be less likely to put you in front of new dream clients too.
You probably already know if your website is out of date, but if you’re unsure, here’s what to look for:
Your branding is inconsistent across all of your marketing channels, or you’ve rebranded and haven’t updated your website yet.
If this is you, you need to get onto this now!
When your branding is inconsistent across your marketing channels, you look less professional and you’re also not as easily recognisable to your dream clients. Plus, if someone clicks to your website from Facebook or Instagram and it looks like it belongs to a different business, there’s going to be unnecessary confusion, and confused people don’t buy!
It takes multiple exposures to your brand to get someone to recognise you and build up trust, and if every platform looks different, you have to work even harder and get in front of people even more. And let’s be real, we start our businesses for freedom, not endless hustle.
The information doesn’t reflect where you are in business or who you serve any longer.
Overtime our businesses change and grow. We niche down or expand out. We offer new services in place of others. We create courses or digital products. Our prices grow up. Our messaging evolves.
Our website need to be growing with our business and reflecting these changes too.
Now I’m not suggesting you change your website every week to reflect any tiny changes in your business, but at least once a year, you should be checking your website is still relevant and showing where you’re at in business.
If your website isn’t evolving yet all of your other marketing channels are, your visitors will notice. And unfortunately, the assumption people tend to make is that you either don’t care or have poor attention to detail.
I’m pretty sure you don’t want people thinking that, so please try to keep things relevant and updated!
Your website looks out-of-date or has out-of-date technology.
Design trends change, and this happens much more quickly than most of us would like!
If you haven’t redone your website in a while, it might be looking a bit dated. Sometime a quick brand refresh might do the trick, but other times it needs a more serious overhaul!
Older design trends tend to pack in the info and features. This makes it harder for the important info to stand out, especially these days where we have so much information vying for our attention. Your website needs to adjust to the newer needs of your visitors by being simple and easy so your visitors will be more likely to take action.
Your website is your virtual storefront as an online business so it shouldn’t look dated or cluttered.
Another big issue with older websites is out-of-date technology. There have been a lot of changes with website tech in the last 3 years, especially with mobile compatibility, Flash and SSL security. Not keeping the tech side of things updated can cause a less than ideal user experience or lead to unnecessary security risks for you and your visitors, and we don’t want that!
Is your website responsive for mobile?
Over half of all internet searches are now done with mobile devices. After all, who doesn’t have their phone with them when they’re out and about these days, especially if you are serving clients and need to be easily contactable?
Exactly!
And if your website doesn’t adjust for different screen sizes, you could be sending your website visitors running! And not only will your visitors not like it... Google doesn’t either, so it will be less likely to show you the top search results.
Some signs you may have a website that is not responsive or has a bad mobile experience could be:
The elements on your website don’t scale well, or are displayed in a way that doesn’t make sense
There are issues navigation since buttons and links are too close together to easily click with your thumb
The text is hard to read because it’s not scaling for the screen size
You may assume that your website should automatically adjust for different screen sizes, but this is not always the case! Some popular website builders require you to design a whole separate mobile website, so they aren’t responsive at all and give you twice as much more to do.
One of the reasons I love Squarespace is because the websites are mobile responsive by default, but even websites on Squarespace can sometimes use a few extra tweaks to look exactly how you want. If your website just needs a few tweaks to look better on mobile, I share some tips on how to optimize your Squarespace website for mobile here.
Is your website to SLOW?
Over time, our internet speeds have improved and our attention spans have decreased. If a website doesn’t load within a few seconds, chances are your visitors will bounce. And someone can’t book your services if they’re not on your website long enough to see them!
Google also doesn’t like slow websites and will be less likely to show you in search results if your website takes ages to load.
Not sure how your website stacks up for speed? Head to Pingdom and enter your website address and you’d get an idea of how your website stacks up. You really want it to take less than 3 seconds to load.
Images are one of the quickest ways to slow a website down. If you have a lot of images, and they haven’t been optimized for speed, it’s time to consider a new website that is speedier and has things optimized from the start.
Can you easily make changes yourself?
Most websites today are built on platforms that allow even the non-techies amongst us to make updates easily.
You shouldn’t have to wait weeks for your website designer to be able to update a price or change a phone number on your website! Also, you shouldn’t have to pay ridiculous amounts of money to be able to have these changes made, either.
A good website will be designed with ongoing maintenance in mind, and shouldn’t be difficult for the website owner to make changes themselves.
If you’re not able to make basic updates yourself, then it’s not going to be easy (or cost-effective!) to scale your website and grow your business, so investing in a new website could make your life a lot easier and save plenty of time and money in the future.
Does Google know you exist?
Is your website able to be found in Google for more than just your business name?
Most DIY and older websites could use some work to optimise them to be found by search engines such as Google. This is called Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO for short, and it’s something that should be considered for all websites.
If you have very little content on your website, you haven’t done any keyword research, you have lots of duplicate information and pages, and your website loads slowly or doesn’t resize for mobile, then you’ll likely have issues with Google showing your website to people that are searching for what you do.
This could be costing you new traffic and dream clients!
A new website gives you an opportunity to create an SEO strategy, clean things up and get a fresh start with search engines, so you can start attracting more people to you organically.
Not sure how to get started with SEO?
Check out the below posts about Squarespace SEO or download the Ultimate SEO Checklist for Squarespace:
How to connect your Squarespace website to Google Search Console
7 things to prepare for ahead of time for an amazing website
Are you booking clients through your website?
This one goes without saying, right?
Your website should be one of your best marketing tools for your business, and if it’s not converting your visitors into clients, there’s an issue.
Most people assume that they need more traffic to their website to book more clients through it, and to a degree this is true.
Statistics show that 3% of your website visitors will be ready to make a purchase. This means that for every 100 people that visit your website, you should be booking about 3 clients.
Go, check your analytics now.
How many website visitors did you get? And how many clients or sales calls did you book?
If you didn’t book around 3 clients for every 100 visitors, you have a conversion issue. And there is no point sending more traffic to your website without fixing the issue first, or you’ll continue to find the results are lacking.
I have some good news though!
There are plenty of updates you can make to improve your conversion rate, and a new website can help you add them in!
Add calls to action throughout your website directing your visitors to the next steps in your website journey
Use testimonials effectively (and here are some ideas to display your testimonials on Squarespace, too)
Fix broken links and set up a custom error page
Make your text easy to skim and take in the important points
By now you’ll have a good idea of whether or not you need to make some changes. Hopefully it’s just a few tweaks, but if it’s more than a handful, it’s often quicker and easier to start fresh, and you’ll generally end up with a more consistent outcome as well.
Whether you choose to invest your time to DIY a new website, or you hire a pro to create you an amazing website that books you clients and makes you money, it’s time to make a plan to make it happen!
Your website should be helping you to grow your business and to make your money, so if it’s no longer serving its purpose, the longer you leave it up, the more time you’ll miss out on booking dreamy clients with it!
If you’re feeling intimidated at the idea of starting over with your website, let’s jump on a free call together to see what it could be like to have a Squarespace expert take care of things for you. This way you can stay in your zone of genius while someone else deals with the tech!