Bring old website back to life: 7 strategies that work
In this digital era, your website is the office of your business. This is the place where you will make your first impression on clients online. A well-maintained website educates visitors about your brand with the latest graphics and informative content. So, it is a must to own an up-to-date website that keeps visitors connected.
If your website is not advanced with tools and technologies, you may lose value and may not appear well in search engine results. Also, an outdated website is not suitable for SEO. A brand new website allows all new opportunities with great functionality.
A good website also brings excellent PR opportunities and better search engine rankings. According to one research, more than 80% of internet users think less to connect if the website is outdated. Also, they will think twice about using your products or services if your website is not fresh or user-friendly.
So, it is vital to keep your website fresh that delivers a pleasant user experience. Not sure what to do to update your website? Here are the topmost 8 strategies that will work and make your online presence worth it.
Website Speed
The fact to know: “A 1 second delay correlates to a 7% reduction in conversions”
To stick in this era, your website must need to engage people within seconds of loading as visitors will not stay in your website if it takes time to load. To check your website loading speed, you can check this using online tools. If your site’s loading speed is low then your site must need an up-gradation with high speed.
Why does website speed matter?
See the below image that justifies a question well.
You should also pick the right elements for website design including graphics, videos, or music. By picking highlighted features, you can engage your readers without harming website speed. To maintain website speed, make the length of a landing page short. Because, if a landing page is too long then visitors might hit the back button and jump to the competitors’ websites.
Reasons that slow your website down: CMS platform, hosting options, image resolution, outdated website codes, web optimization, and much more.
SEO strategy
The fact to know: “68% of online experiences begin with a search engine.”
Do you want to make your website rank high on Google search results than your competitors? If yes then SEO comes to the rescue. To begin with, you need to first analyze your SEO coding. If coding is outdated then you should start working on better SEO coding concerning Google algorithms. This results in a better rank in Google search results.
However, as per the latest Google algorithms, keywords are not the center stage of SEO. Now, top ranking totally depends on an excellent customer journey. So, we suggest you focus on high-quality content and the exceptional services that you offered. Recently, Google has added its own criteria for the user experience that includes a set of metrics affiliated to speed, visual stability, and responsiveness.
Latest SEO trends for 2021: concentrate on user+search intent, customer analytic, SERP optimization, Page experience optimization, mobile SEO, and long-form content.
Key SEO stats
- Google uses over 200 factors in their algorithm for ranking websites (Backlinko)
- Google currently has 86% of the search engine market (Statista)
- The #1 result in Google gets approximately 32% of all clicks (Backlinko)
- 49% of marketers report that organic search has the best ROI of any marketing channel (Search Engine Journal)
- Organic search results that rank on page 1 of Google contain an average of 1,447 words (Backlinko)
- 53% of US consumers that they research products using a search engine before deciding whether or not to buy (Google)
- The median salary for an SEO professional is around $60.5k per year (Backlinko)
- Nearly 60% of the pages ranking in the top 10 Google results are 3 or more years old (Ahrefs)
Bounce Rate
A fact to know: “The average bounce rate range is between 41 to 51%”
Bounce rate is one of the website analytics and high bounce rates are unhealthy when it comes to website performance. It is defined as the percentage of visitors that leave a web page without any action. Bounce rate is vital for your site as it is related to the Google ranking of your website.
If your site’s bounce rate is less, you will have more visitors and high conversions. But, if it is high then your website has an issue with user experience or content, and page layout. However, the normal range of bounce rate totally depends on different industries. Please see the below image by Custom media lab that stated different types of websites had different bounce rates.
Bounce rate is also affected by website loading speed. For example: if your website takes more than 10 seconds to load then your website’s bounce rate will be high. According to research by akamai, 40% of site visitors will not wait more than three seconds before abandoning a site. This is one of the important factors while fixing an outdated website.
Reasons for high bounce rates: web page loading speed, mobile responsiveness, website design & usability, and content.
Mobile-first
A fact to know: “Mobile conversions rates are up 64% compared with the average desktop conversion rates”
Nowadays, a mobile version of your website is a must. So, if you are planning to fix an outdated website then you should have a classic mobile version of your website. This approach means you need to first design a desktop site with a mobile version. In simple terms, you should build your website with mobile users in mind.
With a mobile-first approach, you can save product design time by improving the designer’s productivity. Designers also pay more attention to the product’s content than design.
Mobile-first is content first
In this designing approach, content comes first. You will need to design a website in such a way that focuses on product content first then user interface design. This approach also forces you to remove unnecessary graphics and other UI decorations to make good business sense.
Stats on Mobile-first
- 72% of users expect companies to have a mobile-ready website design.
- 53% of mobile users leave a website if it takes longer than three seconds to load.
- 57% of consumers wouldn’t recommend a website if it doesn’t have a mobile-friendly version.
- Mobile eCommerce accounted for 50% of the total US eCommerce revenue in 2018.
- 68% of companies with mobile-first web design increased their sales.
- According to website design statistics, 79% of users go back to search if the page they landed on isn’t mobile-friendly.
Usability
A fact to know: “38% of visitors will stop engaging if the website content & layout is unattractive.”
Does your site navigate easily? A smooth user experience is an important aspect of your online business. If website navigation is tricky then there are chances to lose site visitors. Your site navigation must be logical and easy to follow that deliver quick information. Website usability includes any navigation bars, menus, content, buttons, videos, hyperlinks, images, games, etc.
Factors that influence usability: Responsiveness, Accessibility, SEO, content & messaging, layout & navigation, task time & expectation, errors & effectiveness, etc.
Stats on web design usability
- 70% of small business websites don’t have Call to Actions on their home pages
- 85% of website Visitors expect the Mobile Version of the website to be faster
- 47% of users expect a maximum of 2 seconds loading time for an average website
- 39% of users will abandon a website if images don’t load or take time to load
- In a duration of 15 minutes, about 66% of users will prefer beauty over plain design
- 44% of website visitors tend to abandon a website if there is no Contact information
Content
A fact to know: “Users only read slightly more than a quarter of the content they see on a web page.”
If you want to increase your website ranking on Google and other search engines then revising old website content will skyrocket rankings without spending a lot of time in extra work. Writing new website content is more complicated than making an update of old content.
By updating website content, you can also increase the effectiveness site’s SEO efforts to boost traffic. If your business has been growing in the past year then you can update the site content with the latest information.
Strategies to update website content
- Before commencing updates to your site, check your SEO.
- Review competitors’ websites before updating your own website.
- Add multimedia elements to your site while updating your website content.
- Test different changes on your website.
- Review old content and design on your website.
Design
A fact to know: “94% of negative feedback for websites is design related”
Trends are come and go but it is necessary to keep up with the latest website design trends. These trends are changing every few years and so, your 3-4 years old website will seem outdated. Before thinking of design change, you can compare your website with competitors who have an up-to-date websites with the latest trends.
Before commencing website redesign, ask the below questions yourself.
- Does my website design look outdated?
- Are my conversions/sales decreasing?
- Have I received complaints about user experience or design-related issues?
Stats to website design
- 83% of people expect a website to load in 3 seconds or less.
- Users spend 88% more time on pages with videos.
- 66% of people prefer to look at a beautifully designed website if given 15 minutes to consume content.
- 73% of companies invest in design to help their brand stand out from competitors.
- 75% of website credibility comes from design.
- 94% of first impressions are related to your site’s web design.
Endnote
A website represents your business online and so it is a life-long investment. It needs to be updated, clean, and interesting now and then so that it can focus on grabbing user’s attention and deliver an exceptional user experience by converting online traffic into trustworthy customers. So, without investing much time in research, embrace these strategies to fix an outdated website and make your business future-proof.