Your website plays a critical role in customer acquisition and has an overall impact on sales and revenue.
Robert Hufton
Your brand forms the core identity of your business. It’s more than simply the name of your company: it's a fusion of the core values, standards, ideals and characteristics embodied by your business.
Your website plays a critical role in customer acquisition and has an overall impact on sales and revenue. For marketing to be cost effective, every touch point with a prospective customer must be in complete alignment.
Typically, an average website has an approximate “shelf life” during which it is seen as new, functional and convenient for users. For the typical brand, that timespan is between 18 and 30 months.
A huge event of 2021 in the website design industry is without doubt the Google Core Vitals algorithm update. All website owners should by now be analysing their website to see how well or not so well Google rates their page experience.
Google offer this handy tool to help you audit your websites performance.
For your brand to remain visible, competitive and relevant, we suggest that you ask the question ‘why do I need to redesign my website?’ on a regular basis; considering the following business critical reasons for a website, logo and branding redesign and upgrade.
Nothing lasts forever. As time moves on and more competitors move into your market, some of your once-loyal and engaged client groups will start to look elsewhere. If you have noticed a drop-off in levels of engagement recently, then your branding probably needs an overhaul.
‘The goal of user experience design... is to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty through the utility, ease of use, and pleasure provided in the interaction with a product.’
It’s extremely important to continue to portray a strong brand image that represents your business accurately and captures the essence of your business. A strong brand image has the ability to make a business stand out beyond the competition and encourage customer affiliation.
Your brand needs to be consistent between all media types: website, social media and online marketing. If your logo is not in high resolution or your branded colours have changed and are not consistent on mobile, tablet or desktop, then it’s time for a redesign.
Your competitors are directly responsible for affecting some of the most critical business decisions you make every day. Whatever the strengths of your competitors, your business holds its own USP – and that needs to be communicated clearly and consistently through your branding.
If you are looking to attract new client groups, your branding needs to be primed to help you connect with them. For example Generation Zers or digital natives, whose online media habits and values may differ significantly from those of previous generations or prior target groups.
Your brand and website should always speak to the people you’re trying to reach. Ideally your rebrand and redesign should be something that enhances your business identity in a way that appeals to both existing and new customers alike; remembering not to disenfranchise your loyal clients.
Conversion rate optimisation is about “finding the right mix of value proposition, call to action and price point to convince a customer to take a deeper level of engagement with your product or service.”
Jeff Gothelf, Lean UX
Read more about CRO in this link:
https://ground.co.uk/post/conversion-rate-optimisation-top-tips
The latest design trends now call for a flat design utilising simple patterns that are two dimensional with a clean, modern look that caters to mobile interfaces as well as desktops - a simple, minimalistic approach to design.
With mobile usage on pace to overcome desktop usage, complex designs with large images make it more difficult for visitors to browse your website. Flat design makes it easier.
Responsive design makes a website easily adaptable to fit the screen sizes of any mobile device. A responsive design makes it possible for visitors to navigate your website easily across all devices, providing a seamless, useful and satisfying experience for the user.
Responsive design will affect credibility, click rates, leads and sales
If your website is not mobile friendly, you will lose visitors and experience a higher bounce rate. This will no doubt directly affect your bottom line, because it will cost you valuable leads. An effective website redesign will address this issue - helping you to reduce bounce rates, increase conversions and improve returns on your investment.
If your website does not consistently reflect the full range of services that you now provide across all platforms and devices, it will result in customers going elsewhere. By redesigning your website to clearly include everything you provide, each visitor will be aware of everything you offer.
‘Invest well in creating a high value User Experience and your business will develop and thrive’ - Robert Hufton, Higher Ground
What is the business value of UX?
A website redesign can help you improve your site architecture so that it is more SEO friendly. A website redesign can help you improve your coding and make your website more SEO friendly by utilising Custom Page URLs, H1, H2, H3 Tags, Page Titles and Alt Tags by employing a more advanced Content Management System, giving you greater flexibility and making the optimisation of your website easier to manage.
Implementing content marketing as part of your marketing strategy can help you build trust, establish credibility and increase traffic and leads. If your current website architecture wasn’t built with a content strategy, a website redesign can make it easier for visitors to find your content, for you to cultivate a lead database and implement marketing automation.
Perhaps your website is still built in flash which is difficult for search engines to read and difficult to access on mobile devices, or maybe your website is running on plugins that have not been updated in years.
Updating your website with the latest technology and plugins will help your website to perform better and be more efficient, providing a better user experience for your visitors.
Having greater control over managing and updating your website means that you can deploy marketing campaigns at a faster rate. This capability allows you to test more landing pages and quickly decide what is and isn’t working for you, change accordingly and see the results faster.
A new design that is streamlined with the right calls to action allows you to better optimise your website for lead generation. By implementing calls to action across each website page, you will be taking greater advantage of every opportunity to convert visitors into leads - significantly contributing to your bottom line.
Perhaps one of the greatest concerns of our time is cyber security, and businesses of all shapes and sizes are just as susceptible to website hacking and viruses as each other. A website built 5 years ago and not updated since will be at significant risk of malware and hacking.
Page experience signals are becoming a critical factor in deciding your Google search ranking. Google announced Core Web Vitals are becoming signals for ranking in search results in May 2021. Google employs these indicative signals to make sure that they choose the most helpful page to rank on top for users.
Search signals for page experience include loading, interactivity, visual stability, mobile-friendliness, safe browsing, HTTPS and no intrusive interstitials. Core web vitals refers to loading, interactivity, and visual strength. These signals measure the experience and perception of users when they visit a webpage.
You can read more about the importance of Google Page Experience on our blog: https://www.ground.co.uk/post/page-experience-google-update
‘UX will finally count towards SEO value. This is great for users, but could pose a challenge for businesses. If you start optimising your content now, you’ll help create a great experience for your users.’
Rob Hufton, Higher Ground
As outlined above, there are quite a few business critical reasons to redesign your website and refresh your branding and logo.
It’s easy to get complacent when your website is working and bringing in business, but it’s also important to maximise any opportunities you have to improve.
Great marketing means continual improvement in order to increase sales, improve returns on investment and lower costs per conversion.
If you have decided, after reading this, that your website is due for an update, or you need a CRO agency to improve your current website and stay ahead of the competition - you can get in touch with a UX agency like us for a chat.
Turn your website or app into a revenue generating machine.
We use User Experience (UX) design and Conversion Rate Optimisation to make sure your digital strategy focuses on what your customers care about most.
Call: 0161 706 1620
