Top Reasons To Upgrade Your Website

It doesn’t matter if you are a really big leader in your industry or a solo blogger who just shares his grandma’s secret cookie recipe with close friends. You need a site. Period. Ah! You have a website already? So what’s next? Updating your website, of course! Why? Doing this at frequent intervals has a great many benefits. Want to know what they are? Read on!

Here’s a synopsis of what you’ll be reading about in the subsequent sections. First, not only does update your website helps in building proper connections but it also increases website security and prevents hacking. Secondly, updating your digital visiting card will help underline your social media campaigns, all the while increasing traffic to your website. 

Assuming you built an E-commerce website in 2017 and you have been giving it all the love and care by frequently updating the product listings. Or you went a step ahead and upgraded the software versions of Magento or WooComerce. Is that enough to stand out? Nope, definitely not the competitive E-commerce market.

Let’s dive deeper into the reasons as to why your website needs an update both in terms of functionality and design!

What’s perpetually changing? Web technologies –  rapidly and consistently. Employing the latest and relevant technologies will provide an improved user experience which eventually results in revenue growth. How do they do that? They enable websites to load faster, make it lighter, increasingly secure, less complex (need one for my life), and so on.

When an entrepreneur rebrands his/her business, it changes the way the company is represented in the eye of the public through every channel (not just the website, mind you). Rebranding can impact the design of the brand (logo, color palette, typography, photography, icons, etc.) as well as the messaging (company name, value proposition, slogan, content, voice, and tone, etc.,) to more competitively position itself in the marketplace.

Like website redesigns, company rebrands are initiated and shaped by business goals and market realities. Rebranding is more than just redesigning your website. A company undergoes rebranding when the value, goals, product, or service are reinvented. Rebranding is communicated through so many key elements like tone, colors, logo, messaging, and value proposition. For example, if you’ve been an avid Instagram user for a long time, you will certainly remember the old and new Instagram logos (You forgot? You are being judged!) 

It is by far the most spectacular way to let people know about your business ethics/ values, and work attitude to a prospective customer. However, you have to be pedantic while rebranding, as even a small flaw in the process can create a wrong perception in the market. The changes you make must comply with your business strategies. 

When laymen talk about design, it's the colors, shapes, and sizes that spring to mind. But, any expert would beg to say that design consists of a lot more aspects. Good website design is merely cluttered and mundane. The clearer the better, the simple the best. 'Easy on the eye' is every website designers' goal. UI/UX has to be inch-perfect to attract and retain users. Adding updates and changes to the design that reflect your idea or product better gives the users a sense of being active and up-to-date. These changes play an impeccable role in bringing more traffic when building backlinks. A neat, informative, and user-friendly website goes a long way in fetching new customers. 

Speed is of paramount importance! We have talked about its importance enough. Faster loading = less bounce rate = happy visitors. Patience is a virtue alright, not so much in the virtual world!

Gen X and Gen Y entrepreneurs know what speed means to them! Users from the current generation are soaked in technology which is synonymous with speed and convenience. They’ll switch to a competitor before you can say STO-. Millennial users have an attention span of a goldfish and you can't afford to have a website that is slow. With new technologies like CDN and Caching, the time taken to load a web page won't be more than a couple of seconds (must tell you, very crucial few seconds). Right from unoptimized bulky media files to choosing the correct web hosting platform, my friend, you gotta be very careful! 

This generation is trying to fit the world into their palms using a smartphone. As maximum traffic is generated through mobile phones, it is of paramount importance to ensure that the website is compatible with desktops and phones. The visitors to your website need a design that is apposite for mobile devices. In fact, these days, designers start with the sketches for mobile devices and then proceed to desktop design. This trend is called 'mobile-first website development' ( no brownie points for the name, fully agreed) which is a win-win for you and your customers. Even if you have a dedicated app for your service, it is still worthy to optimize your website that fits all mobile browsers. 

When to improve your SEO? All the time! Start monitoring and analyzing the traffic to your website using tools like Google Analytics, SEOptimer, and the like which will give data regarding  SEO. This data will help you come up with insights to improve traffic. SEO tools like Moz can tell you what exactly is wrong with your website and most of it is completely fixable by yourself. However, not all recommendations are DIY and you’d require a professional SEO services company to help with the same.

Refreshing your website regularly, by adding blog posts or new pages will help you bring more traffic to it. Guest posts, influencer marketing, getting mentioned in articles are a few tactics you can implement. At times, there are chances for DIY SEO improvements to go wrong. You have to be careful while sneaking in the keywords because if the website gets cluttered, it is sure to fall like a house of cards. Get tips from content writers and SEO analysts to subtly incorporate keywords. Follow the best practices, proper guidelines, and viola! There you are, on the top!

Everyone in the business knows content is the king. You make content your best player and search engines will draw your website to the top. The content should be simple in terms of comprehension and on-point regarding your services or product. The content should bring out the essence of your company and also be trustworthy. Ensure your story is reflected in the content which will make you unique and a difference in the market. How often should you be making changes to the content? It is suggested that you make changes to the content at least every two months. It keeps the loitering crowd interested. 

Integrations! Where would Calculus be without it? Just kidding, we hate math too! Once you start getting visitors (wink wink), you will need to keep track of them; what made them visit, their behavior, your fans ( regular visitors), etc., and that’s why you need to integrate Google Analytics or any other analytics tool that you feel does the job well.

Also, don’t be shy trying to be a social butterfly! You need to integrate your social media accounts on the site too, well, it’s a great way to reach a variety of new people! However, all this isn’t possible without updating! And that leads us to the last of the website updating pep talk!

To sum up –

There is a myriad of benefits to updating your website’s design, code, and SEO. A regularly updated quality content helps your website to rank better organically in search engines for the relevant keywords (we can hear the leftover cash in your pocket, saved from paid ads). Employing the latest technology to speed up the website keeps it protected and earns the much-needed trust from your users.

So how often should you revamp your website? Experts say two to three years, any longer than that, and it faces the e-peril of falling into oblivion. Providing a user-friendly experience using the latest web technologies and strategies such as responsive web design and bots help you to attract new visitors. Your website is the pedestal of your business which converts the visitors into customers. There we said it! Pip-pip!