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How to Know When it’s Time for a Website Redesign

Written by zack@vauxdigital.com on . Posted in Web Design. No Comments on How to Know When it’s Time for a Website Redesign

Your website design is important to your business. According to a 2021 survey conducted by Top Design Firms, 50% of consumers believe that website design is crucial to a business’s brand. The survey also points out that 42% of people would leave a website due to poor functionality.

All the hard work you put into getting visitors to your site could be wasted if half of them come away with a negative opinion of your business. Your business needs more than just a website. You need a site that will engage your visitors, build your credibility and drive sales.

If you’ve been wondering if your business website needs an update, below are 6 reasons it may be time to consider a website redesign

6 Reasons it may be time to consider a website redesign:

1. Your website is not mobile-friendly

According to Statista, 58.99% of all internet traffic came from mobile devices during the second quarter of 2022. This means that more than half of your website visitors are visiting your site from a phone or a tablet.

Mobile users expect to have a great user experience on your website when viewed on a mobile device. As the Top Design Firms study above mentions, 42% of users said they would leave a website due to poor functionality.  If your website isn’t optimized for mobile devices, the images, content, and navigation on your site can leave your visitors frustrated, causing them to leave with a negative impression of your brand.

Visit your business website on your phone.  Does the experience match the experience desktop users are having?  If not, it’s time to start thinking about a website redesign.

2. Your design is outdated

Design trends and styles change over time.  If you haven’t updated the look and feel of your website in 3-5 years, there’s a good chance that your website looks outdated.  If your current design is 5-10 years old, it’s definitely feeling outdated to your website visitors.

A good gauge to determine if your website design is outdated or not is to compare it to your current marketing collateral, social media efforts, and any other communications you may be sending out to your customers.  Does the look and feel of your website reflect the current state of your brand?

An outdated design is a great reason to consider a website redesign. For the majority of your website visitors, your website is their first impression of your business.  It’s important that your website reflects who you are today, not who you were 3-5 years ago.

3. It’s difficult to update your website

In the early days of web design, businesses were dependent on web developers to make changes to their websites.  This was difficult and costly, forcing most businesses to only make infrequent updates to their site.

Today, most websites are built using a content management system (CMS) that allows users to log in to the site and make changes to content easily. Spelling or grammatical errors can be easily updated, articles posted, and pages refreshed with current information – all without the need for an expensive web developer.

If your website isn’t easy to update in-house, it may be time to consider a redesign to integrate a CMS.  It will help your business be more responsive with changes, provide your visitors with fresher content, and save your business money.

4. Your website is slow

If your website is slow to load, it can quickly create a frustrating experience for your visitors – especially on mobile devices. Most studies consider 3 seconds of load time to be the maximum threshold to ensure a positive user experience. According to Business.com, pages that take longer than 3 seconds to load lose around 53% of mobile users.

In our increasingly busy world, delivering your website quickly is vital.  A speedy website encourages your visitors to load more pages and spend more time consuming your content.  The less time your visitors spend waiting for your page to load, the more time they have to learn about your business and interact with your brand.

Not sure if your website load times are considered slow? We can tell you.  Request a Free Website Review and we’ll provide a report on how your website performs.

5. Your website isn’t meeting your business goals

It’s not enough just to have a website. Your website should engage your visitors, build your credibility and drive sales.

To take full advantage of your business website, it should meet your business goals. Whether your business goals are to generate new leads or to drive more e-commerce sales, it’s important that your website is designed with these goals in mind.

Business goals can change over time.  Even if your website was originally designed to match these goals, it may be time to revisit those goals. If you want your website to do more for your bottom line, it may be time to consider a website redesign.

6. Your current design doesn’t match your brand

Your website visitors deserve to know the real you. Does your website reflect who your business is? We often work on redesign projects where the direction of the company has changed and their current website doesn’t reflect these changes.

Just like business goals, brands typically evolve over time.  If your business has recently changed its branding, voice, style, or business focus, it’s important for your website to match these changes.

Your website should extend your business’s brand.  It shouldn’t compete with it. If you feel that your website doesn’t mirror the feel of your current day-to-day business, it may be a good time to look at a redesign.

 

 

Your website is the digital front door to your company. Making sure that your website meets the needs of your visitors will have an enormous impact on your business. If you feel like your site fits into any or all of these reasons, it may be time to look at investing in a website redesign.

Interested in getting some professional feedback on your current website design? We’ll provide a no-cost, no-obligation review of your company website. You’ll receive a report with recommendations on how your website can better achieve business goals.  Request a free website review now.

 

5 Website Design Mistakes That May Be Hurting Your Business

Written by zack@vauxdigital.com on . Posted in Web Design. No Comments on 5 Website Design Mistakes That May Be Hurting Your Business

Your website is a vital part of your business, but if your website suffers from common website design mistakes, it could be costing you revenue and customers. The best business websites attract visitors and efficiently convert them into customers. They are purpose-built, focusing on business goals. If you’re not seeing the results you expect from your business website, it may be due to website design mistakes that interrupt the conversion process.

bad website design
Feeling down about your company’s website design mistakes? At least this isn’t your website.

At VAUX, we offer a FREE Website and Digital Marketing Review where our team of experts review a website and recommend ways that it can achieve better results. As a part of these reviews, we encounter various website design mistakes – some are costing businesses thousands of dollars in revenue annually.  We focus our reviews heavily on website conversions – how well does a website attract visitors and how well does it convert those visitors into customers. Depending on the business, these conversions may represent new business leads, e-commerce sales, newsletter subscriptions, or contacting the business of more info.

In our years of experience helping business get better results from their websites, here are a few of the most common website design mistakes that may be hurting your business.

1: Not Mobile-Optimized

Currently more than 50% of all web traffic comes from mobile devices. If more than half of your potential customers are browsing your website from a mobile device and your page is difficult to browse or navigate on these devices, you’re losing customers.

Websites that are not mobile-optimized suffer from disrupted content flows, unusable navigation menus, and impossibly tiny design elements as the website attempts to load a desktop formatted design on a smaller screen. These errors can greatly affect your website experience from users on mobile devices. If your mobile website experience is unpleasant, users will quickly move on to other sites or tasks. As users move on from your website, you lose the opportunity to share your products and services with them.

If your website isn’t optimized for mobile, we’re not here to shame you, but with more than half of all web traffic coming from mobile devices, it’s time make the change.

The Fix:

If your website is not optimized for mobile devices, you’ll probably need to have it redesigned.  The best mobile-optimized sites are built using responsive-design – meaning your site content will adjust automatically to various devices.

2: No Call-to-Action

Your website should have clear goals. Those goals are measured in conversions – when a user completes a desired action on your website. A Call-to-Action, or CTA, highlights the desired actions on your website and invites your users to “convert”. If your website doesn’t have a clear Call-to-Action, you’re missing out on business that would be generated as your site visitors become customers.

CTA’s invite users to fill out a contact form, signup for your mailing list, purchase a trending product, and more. They should be shaped around the business goals for your website, should be clear and repeated throughout your website to be most effective.

The Fix:

First, start by setting few goals for your website.  Make sure to prioritize them by importance to your business. Create a website CTA around your top website goal and add it in a prominent place on your site.  CTA’s are typically buttons and should be designed in a way that stands out from the rest of your content.  Remember, you’re trying to let users know the ideal pathway you’d like them to travel on your website – so make CTA’s clear and obvious.

Bonus Tip: Less is more with CTA’s.  Having too many CTA’s on your website can create confusion for your users.

3: Business Description is Unclear

website example with no clear description
This website has beautiful imagery, but can you tell what this company is or what they offer in a quick glance?

This is one of the more common website design mistakes we see when completing Free Website Reviews at VAUX. Your website should let visitors know what your business does immediately upon coming to your homepage. It should be primary in the design of your website – or you risk your visitors leaving quickly. Your visitors don’t want to spend unnecessary time searching for what you offer.

You know your business well – what services or products your provide, who you serve, and your competitive advantages.  Visitors to your site don’t know these aspects of your business. In fact, it’s best to assume that your website visitors know nothing about your organization.  Having a clear description of what your organization offers will help engage those who are looking for what you provide.

The Fix:

Add a headline and a bit of text to the top of your home page (above the fold) that lets users know what you offer and who you offer it to.

Bonus Tip: Just below this text is a great spot to include your primary CTA to help drive conversions.

4: Lack of Contact Information

People looking for your products and services want to get in touch with you. You want people looking for your products and services to get it touch with you.  Your website should make it as easy as possible for your website visitors to call or email you with questions, to learn more about your business, or to talk about their needs.

Don’t hide your company contact information away on your contact page. For best results, place it at the top and bottom of all of your pages.  This lets visitors know that you welcome their call or email.

The Fix:

Add your business phone number and your email address to the top of your website. Top bars are great places to place this contact information. They provide enough space to also include your social media links – another way visitors may choose to contact you.

Bonus Tip: Make your phone number a link to allow mobile users to click on your phone number and call you immediately.

5: Confusing Navigation

desktop website example with hamburger menu
This website’s use of the hamburger menu on the desktop version of their site misses opportunities for visitors to see the pages they offer.

Your website contains information that allows visitors to make a decision about your products and services.  It’s important to organize that information in ways that allow your users to easily find what they are looking for. Your website’s main menu plays a vital role in letting visitors know the information you provide and how they can quickly access it.

A common navigation mistake is using a mobile “hamburger” menu on the desktop version of your website.  The hamburger icon hides away your menu offerings only displaying them when clicked. Using this type of navigation on desktops prevents users from being able to quickly identify the pages your website offers.  Since desktop users are used to seeing menu navigation across the top of the page, your site will perform best presenting your menu this way to them.

The Fix:

If you have more than 5-7 top-level menu items, look to restructure your content using sub-menus to keep things focused for your users. Only use the hamburger menu on mobile devices and use a more traditional menu design for desktop users.  Good responsive design of your website will adapt your site content to the device visitors are using. Your navigation menu should adapt as well.

 

 

These 5 website mistakes are the most common websites mistakes we see at VAUX.  Most of them are easily fixed and when corrected will help your website perform at it’s best.  You work hard to ensure your business succeeds.  Your website should work as hard as you do to drive results toward your business goals.

Not getting the results you want from your website? We can help identify areas of opportunity in your website to help you attract more traffic and convert more visitors.

Request your FREE Website and Digital Marketing Review and our team of marketing experts will review your website and provide a report that includes recommendations to increase your website results. Our reviews are no-cost and no-obligation.  You can take our recommendations and implement them yourself or choose to utilize our affordable website and digital marketing services to carry them out.

Feel free to reach out if you have questions regarding VAUX digital or our digital marketing services.

Small Business Website Design

Guide to Small Business Website Design

Written by zack@vauxdigital.com on . Posted in Digital Advertising, Web Design. No Comments on Guide to Small Business Website Design

So you’ve recently started a small business. Congratulations on taking the first step toward bringing your ideas or products to the world. Whether you are a first-time entrepreneur or you are starting one of many businesses in your portfolio, starting a new business can be both exciting and challenging. This guide will help you make decisions on how to market your new business on the internet. Let’s get started with our Guide to Small Business Website Design.

The Importance of a Website for your Small Business

As of January 2022, 307 million US residents were on the internet – a staggering 92% of the population. The average US household has at least 2 computers and at least 2 smartphones. The internet is a part of our daily lives in a big way.

The internet currently consists of over 1 billion websites and its growing daily.  To find the information users are searching for, they perform 8.5 billion google searches per day.  An average person completes 3-4 google searches per day.

With all of this information at the world’s fingertips, it’s more important than ever that your small business has a presence on the web. Your website lets users know you exist, the products or services you offer, and how they can purchase your offerings. With 1 billion other websites competing for users’ attention, it’s vital to have a website that follows current best practices in its build, design, content, search engine optimization, and functionality

Should I Build My Website Myself or Hire a Professional?

This question can be answered by asking another question – do you have the time, expertise, and tools available to build your small business website yourself?  If you do, building your small business website yourself can save your new business money while also keeping you closely connected to the question of how to market your website.  Tools like Wix and Squarespace are great resources for business owners to try their hand at building their own website. For those looking for a more hands-on approach, a self-hosted wordpress website can be quickly launched and customized using a vast collection of themes and plugins.

If you don’t have the time, tools, or expertise to build a website, it’s best find a website professional who can do the heavy lifting for you.  The advantages of hiring a pro are:

  1. Time – a professional will be able to build your website for you in less time that it will take for you to learn and use the necessary tools.  And as the business owner, you don’t lose any of your own time building the website and can focus on your business.
  2. Customization – working with a professional to build your small business website provides the opportunity to build a website totally unique to your needs and customized to your brand. Most website builder services utilize templates which you customize to match your brand, but limitations exist with these templates.  Hiring a website designer to develop your website gives you the ability of having a fully custom build.
  3. Expertise – the web is constantly evolving and with it, website best practices are regularly changing. A website professional will be aware of these changes and will be able to leverage the newest and best practices for your website.
  4. Relationship – working with a web designer to build your small business website means you’ll always have a professional to call when you need something in the future.  Pivoting your business model? Launching a new revenue stream? Want to update your site with a fresh look and feel? A quick call or email to the designer who built your website should get you moving forward on any of these changes.

The Basics of a Small Business Website

Domains:

Usually the starting point of the small business website design process, a domain is a unique web address that people will use to find your website. Domains are purchased through a domain registrar such as GoDaddy or NameCheap and are connected to your web hosting server to connect your domain address to your website files. Domains with a “.com” ending are the most popular and recognizable, but other domain types are available and can be good options as well.

Our Recommended Domain Registrar: NameCheap

HTML/CSS:

HTML and CSS files are the data files that contain the code that determine how your website looks, what is says, and how it functions.  HTML files form the structure and CSS files determine the style.  Other popular file types that may be a part of a website are PHP files and Javascript files.  Each file type has a role in bringing your website to life.  These files are uploaded to a web hosting server where they can be served to website visitors on demand.

Web Hosting:

To be seen by your visitors, the various files that make up your website must live on a computer (server) that is connected to the internet 24/7. The best and most cost effective way to do this is by purchasing a hosting service from a hosting company with hardware specifically built for the task.  Web hosts are built for security, performance, and reliability – usually at a large scale.  Many website hosting providers host thousands of websites on their hardware.

Our Recommended Web Host: Cloudways

Content Management System (CMS):

In the early days of the web, business websites coded from scratch using mainly html and images. As the web developed, content management systems were built to provide a large set of features and complex functionality in one package.  These systems allow users to easily manipulate content, add/edit pages, and manage photos and video.  The WordPress CMS is the most popular example of a CMS that currently powers over 43% of the web.

Our Recommended CMS: WordPress

SSL Certificate:

SSL certificates create an encrypted connection and establish trust on your website. This encrypted connection allows sensitive information such as credit card details, login credentials, and other personal data to be transmitted securely – preventing the interception of this data by attackers. In 2018, Google began flagging websites without a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate installed on their website.  Sites without an SSL certificate are labeled with a “Not Secure” message in the URL bar and the site’s search ranking with Google is affected. Luckily SSL certificates are free and easy to install on many web hosts such as Cloudways. If your organizational website handles a lot of sensitive personal information (like e-commerce, health or financial information) it may be wise to increase SSL security by purchasing a SSL certificate from a trusted CA (Certificate Authority) that includes a warranty against data breaches. NameCheap offers a variety of paid SSL options to suit your needs.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization):

Having a beautiful website with excellent content is a great start, but to deliver that content to more visitors, you have to be found.  Google and other search engines provide users with a simple way to search for the content you’re looking for.  As the web has grown, search engines have adapted their criteria for websites to allow them to display the most powerful search engine results to their users. It’s important that your website is built with search engines in mind.  Everything from how you address the pages of your site to the speed in which it loads effects how your content displays in search engines.

Email:

Email accounts can often be an overlooked part of the web development process.  In 2022, some businesses still communicate with their customers using a gmail or other free email service. Creating email accounts for your business that match your business domain can be easily accomplished and usually at minimal cost. Whether you’re building your small business website yourself or hiring a professional, keep this aspect of the project in mind.

Determining The Goals of Your Small Business Website

When building their first website for a new business, many business owners focus on the design of the website.  Like the brick and mortar building that they will display their products or the offices they will meet with clients, they want their website to reflect the characteristics of their brand.

But a great website doesn’t just look good – it should also work hard to accomplish business objectives.  Visitors to your site may stick around if they like the look and feel, but if they are not finding the information most important to them or contacting your business to learn more, opportunities are lost.

When building your small business website, make a list of goals your website should accomplish and make sure to build the necessary processes to meet these goals into the site.  Here’s a sample list of website goals:

  • capture customer email addresses for email marketing efforts
  • have customers call your business for more information
  • allow visitors to your site to book an appointment
  • encourage them to send you an email through an online contact form
  • give visitors a coupon code to encourage e-commerce sales
  • provide a way to allow visitors to donate to your nonprofit quickly and easily

Having clear goals for your website will allow you to determine its effectiveness as a business tool.  When website data shows increases or decreases in these goals, refinements can be made to the site to optimize for these goals. Goals tied to dollar values can also help measure the ROI of your website investment.

Tips For Building a Small Business Website

  • Analyze your competitors’ websites – review the look/feel AND business effectiveness of the website.  Does this website represent the characteristics of their brand? Does it have clear objectives that stand out to the visitor? What does this site do well?  What does it not do well?  The answers to these questions will give you a head-start in building your small business website.
  • Make Lists – professionals don’t just start building a website.  They plan the project and outline the goals and objectives.  Take the time to do this for your project.  Make lists of what you want your website to look like, to include, to accomplish.  It’s even a great idea to make lists of websites that you like and that have functionality you think would be a great match for your small business website.  If you choose to tackle the project on your own, you’ll have a great foundation to start from.  If you hire a web professional, these lists will be invaluable to get the conversation and process going.
  • Utilize a web professional’s expertise – even if you plan on building your website yourself, develop a relationship with a website designer who can share some of their experience with working with similar businesses.  At VAUX, we love talking through ideas and questions with small businesses – even if they don’t work with us.  Give us a call  at (480)532-5411 or send us an email and we’d be happy to help provide some additional insight into your project.

Conclusion

It’s vital for a small business website to look great and meet business goals.  Small business website design can be handled by the owner or employee of the business or a professional web designer can be hired to complete the task.  Regardless of which route you choose, the same project elements should be considered. At VAUX, we love helping small businesses build a website that reflects the passion and dedication they have to their business.  We also love sharing our knowledge and expertise to those who choose the DIY route.