When was the last time you looked at your company’s website? When was the last time you talked about your website in a business meeting? When was the last time you talked about your website as a part of your revenues or sales?

If any of these questions left you scratching your head, then it might be time to redesign your website. Here are just a few reasons to reconsider your website.

You Don’t Even Have Control of Your Website

• You don’t know where your website is hosted or who built it. This is far more common than you think. We get at least a couple of new clients a year that come to us with little or no understanding of where their website is and who controls and has access to it. If this is you, start asking questions or reach out to us to do a quick review to find out who is actually controlling your website.
• You forgot you even had a website. This is probably the most popular and yet the most surprising. All of us use and rely on websites for everything in our daily lives. If you want to buy something, even stuff you normally go to the store for, you probably start the process online–researching, comparing prices, and most often buying. If you’re trying to learn something or just prove your friend wrong, you go to a website or two. But, we often forget all of this when we consider our company websites. The bottom line is that your website is impacting your business. The only question is…is it helping or hurting?
• Your agency, or worse, some individual, actually owns your domain and/or website hosting. Believe it or not, this is not an uncommon scenario. Many agencies and fly-by-night marketing companies routinely “hold hostage” client’s websites on “proprietary platforms” as a retention strategy. Shameful extortion! Regardless of how painful the transition you must recapture your website, even if it means a full rebuild, and get out of this situation. The risk of losing your domain name and website is simply too high as these types of actors typically go out of business or extort unreasonable fees from you for something that should be your asset, not theirs.

Your Website is Just Plain Broken

• You can’t even find what you’re looking for on your website. Regardless of the business or industry that you’re in, your website should be a primary resource for you and your employees. Sales and marketing folks should be using your website as a daily resource for selling and promoting your products and services. If you don’t have the right content and a general knowledge base that is intuitively organized, then you need a redesign. You should have handy landing pages, case studies, presentations, demos, and testimonials that help you promote and sell. If your employees don’t or can’t use your website to do their jobs and grow your company, then customers certainly won’t.
• You can’t make any changes to it without paying a web developer. This is another common but unnecessary challenge. Modern content management systems allow you to update and add content to your website with the simplicity of drag and drop. You need this simplicity because customers and Google demand that your website be a living and breathing resource. You must be able to make the majority of your website updates without having to hire a web developer. If you can’t, you need a redesign.

Technology Has Moved Forward, But Your Website Hasn’t

• You’re on old technology. If your website is heavily laden with tiny text, you’re unable to update it without a web developer, it takes several seconds (instead of milliseconds) to load, looks like a MySpace page, requires FrontPage to edit it, or just looks like it was designed in the 90s, you might be on old technology. Even the most complex website should be easy to update and manage via some form of content management system. It should be fast, rendering immediately without any delay, loading, or building of the page.
• It’s unusable on your smartphone. Take a quick look at your website on your mobile phone. Can you browse and use your website on your phone as easily as you do on your desktop or laptop? Like it or not, anywhere from 50-60% of your customers are using your website from their mobile devices. You can check how many mobile users you have by looking at Google Analytics. If you don’t have Google Analytics set up or don’t even know what that is, then contact us. We’ll set it up for free and walk you through an analysis of who and how your customers are using your website.

Your Website Design Has Aged Poorly

• You apologize every time you show it to anyone. Enough said.

Your Business Strategy Has or Is Changing

• Your business has changed over time. You have new or different products. You’re serving different customers or markets. This is probably the most important reason to consider a redesign. If your business is in or has gone through a pivot, your website is going to be critical to getting traction in that new direction. The last thing you want to do is confuse potential customers or waste your employees’ time fielding inquiries for stuff you don’t do anymore.
• Your business has grown. You have expanded your products and services. This is an awesome problem to have. Take the opportunity to redesign your website to accommodate current and future growth. Work with a strategic-minded web design and development firm, like Kaleidico, to accommodate the growing demand of your customers and ensure your website is part of your revenue growth.
• You have a new business strategy or direction for the business. You’re starting or spinning out a new business or division. Are you getting ready for a pivot, or do you just want to try targeting a new or different customer? Your website can be the most effective way to test new strategies, markets, and products.
• You want to implement a content-driven strategy. The web is an interconnected web of content. Your customers are looking at and consuming this content at a voracious pace. We, and your customers, are all constantly looking at our screens and scanning through our news feeds. If you want to be at the top of your customers’ minds, you need to constantly produce and publish content. If you can’t do that without a web developer or technical person, then you’re going to lose.

Your Website Doesn’t Contribute to Your Revenue

• Your sales team is always begging for leads. Again, this goes without the need for explanation. If your sales team is clamoring for fresh leads, redesigning your website could be an easy answer to this pain point.

In most cases, redesigning your website to become an important part of your business strategy and revenue generation is simpler than you think. Content management systems have become much simpler and cheaper to use and give you, the business stakeholder, total control over your website and content.

The Internet is becoming the backbone of commerce in all industries. You can’t afford to be out of the market. Your website has to be a central part of your revenue strategy.

How can we help? What questions do you have? Contact Kaleidico for a free website evaluation.