{"id":4346,"date":"2015-08-06T04:14:35","date_gmt":"2015-08-05T18:14:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.staging.tired-sense.flywheelsites.com\/?p=4346"},"modified":"2023-07-19T17:10:14","modified_gmt":"2023-07-19T07:10:14","slug":"4-clear-signs-your-website-needs-a-redesign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/undullify.com\/4-clear-signs-your-website-needs-a-redesign\/","title":{"rendered":"4 Clear Signs Your Website Needs a Redesign"},"content":{"rendered":"

4 Clear Signs Your Website Needs a Redesign<\/strong><\/h1>\n
ADRIENNE WOLTER | 5 AUG 2015<\/span><\/h6>\n

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Like it or not, the first impression of your business that your web visitors get is going to come straight from the design of your website.<\/p>\n

Are you giving a good impression, or leaving your visitors with a bad one? How can you even tell?<\/p>\n

If you are trying to decide whether or not to redesign your website, the first question that may come to mind is whether or not your site looks \u201cmodern\u201d enough.<\/p>\n

This may be an important concern, but in and of itself it is often not a good enough gauge of whether you need to redesign.<\/p>\n

Trends come and go, and what looks super modern right now might look really tacky in just a year or two. Plus, these modern designs are uncharted territory \u2013 they might not even engage your visitors as much as you\u2019d hope they do<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Using looks alone to base your decision on whether to redesign your website is not enough<\/a><\/div>\n

Click To Tweet<\/a><\/p>\n

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So looking modern for the sake of looking modern is out. What next?<\/p>\n

Well, here are four clear signs that your site needs a redesign, with the proof to back them up.<\/p>\n

1. It Doesn\u2019t Appeal to Your Target Audience<\/strong><\/h3>\n

If your website does not appeal to your target audience, you aren\u2019t going to sell anything.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s harsh, but it\u2019s true. Your visitors are making snap judgments about your website from the moment it loads (and usually sooner, as you\u2019ll see later).<\/p>\n

One study found that users form an opinion of a website in as little as 50 milliseconds<\/a> (one twentieth of a second). If that initial impression is favorable, they\u2019re more likely to stay around; according to Gitte Lindgaard, the author of that study, that\u2019s because of cognitive bias.<\/p>\n

If their initial impression is a good one, they want to keep looking to prove to themselves that they made a good judgment<\/a>, and they are less likely to see minor faults in the underlying content.<\/p>\n

If your website is appealing to your target audience, you\u2019ve already won half the battle.<\/p>\n

Last year, FontShop<\/a> underwent a redesign. It was unique among redesigns because they initially released the new design in an incomplete state<\/a>. According to FontShop\u2019s project manager, Ivo Gabrowitsch, this was so that they could elicit user feedback on the new design.<\/p>\n

As it turned out, feedback was enormously positive, and they used what constructive criticism there was to come up with a user-approved and far more user-friendly design.<\/p>\n

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Before redesign<\/p><\/div>\n

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\"fontshop-homepage-new\"

After redesign<\/p><\/div>\n

If your visitors\u2019 initial impression of your website is bad, well, they probably won\u2019t stick around to see if the content makes up for it.<\/p>\n

If your website doesn\u2019t appeal to your target audience, you need a redesign.<\/p>\n

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People will keep looking at your website to prove to themselves that they made a good judgment<\/a><\/div>\n

Click To Tweet<\/a><\/p>\n

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2. It Doesn\u2019t Have a Strong Enough Call to Action\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Your website needs to have a goal, and you need to be guiding your visitors to it. Strengthening your call-to-action (CTA) is one of the easiest ways to decrease your bounce rate<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In some cases, people will find what they need and still bounce, and that\u2019s okay. Blogs have notoriously high bounce rates<\/a> (at least, ones that show full posts on the main page). If you have a brick and mortar store and your visitors go to your website to find your hours, find them right on your homepage, and leave, that\u2019s not a bad bounce.<\/p>\n

But the same is not true if you own an eCommerce site. If you are selling something, you absolutely don\u2019t want your visitors to bounce. You want them to stay a while, look around, and eventually check out.<\/p>\n

Popular eCommerce websites swap out CTAs all the time, and they have pinpointed the exact words, phrases, and offers that excite their audience.<\/p>\n

For example, Target.com<\/a> prioritizes their shipping deal, since much of their audience could otherwise opt to just shop in-store instead:<\/p>\n

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Target.com choose to highlights its free shipping offer front and center on the homepage<\/p><\/div>\n

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Dating sites are great places to find strong copy, too. Look how simple and effective the OkCupid<\/a> homepage is:<\/p>\n

\"okcupid-homepage\"<\/p>\n

Does your homepage make it this clear where you want your visitors to go? Are you guiding them to where the great deals are, or giving them a clear path of where to go next?<\/p>\n

If not, you need a redesign.<\/p>\n

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High bounce rates are not always a bad thing, it’s the reason behind the bounce that’s important<\/a><\/div>\n

Click To Tweet<\/a><\/p>\n

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3. It\u2019s Slow<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Few things will send away more visitors than a website that doesn\u2019t load fast enough.<\/p>\n

Exactly how fast is \u201cfast enough?\u201d According to KissMetrics<\/a>, half of people on the web expect websites to load in under two seconds, and many will abandon a site if it doesn\u2019t load in three.<\/p>\n

Yet, the average website takes about seven seconds to load<\/a> on a desktop and over ten on mobile. If that\u2019s not compelling enough for you, consider this: Amazon found that for them, a 100-millisecond decrease in load time translated into a 1% increase in revenue<\/a>.<\/p>\n

How does your website stack up? You can use a tool like WebPageTest<\/a> or Google PageSpeed Insights<\/a> to measure your website speed and get suggestions for how to improve it.<\/p>\n

Midway through June, Instagram<\/a> rolled out brand new profile and hashtag pages that are markedly faster than previously. The desktop design now closely mirrors the smartphone apps, with a stark white background and all the attention on the photos. According to a speed test, the profile for Starbucks loads in just 1.78 seconds.<\/p>\n

\"instagram-starbucks\"<\/p>\n

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Here are a few quick ways you can usually speed up an existing website:<\/p>\n