So, You Have a Website Already...
It’s up and running. May not be the prettiest thing ever, but it’s functional. It’s okay. People can click on your buttons and links…even when they’re smaller than an ant on mobile devices. That’s what zoom in is for, right? Why waste money and time on a website revamp?!
I don’t know about you, but unless I’m desperate, I’m not going to browse further on your website. Sloppy design and poor loading times might also hint at the professionalism and branding of your company. Do I really want to buy or read something from a website with no secure link, vague content, endless error pages and/or poor loading speed?
What Your Website Represents
Your website represents your online shop, home or space. It is yours and yours alone, so let you or your brand’s personality shine. Just like how you’d try to at least tidy up your home or office if a friend or client were going over, so it is with your website. It’s good manners to do so, and reflects your personality, too.
What is a Good Website Made Up of?
This is a rather intuitive question, I think. As an internet user yourself, what annoys you the most, and what do you like best about your favourite websites?
There are plenty of things I like about my favourite websites, some being:
- Beautiful design.
- Loads faster than the other websites I have open in my browser.
- Beautiful Pinterest images for me to share (yes, I’m a tad addicted to Pinterest, I admit! P.s. Pinterest is a great platform to drive traffic to your website, but let’s save that for another post!).
- Looks good and is easy to navigate not just on desktop, but mobile and tablets, too.
- If it’s a blog, easy navigation to other posts I might be interested in.
- Always updated with fresh and relevant content.
- And more!
These aren’t just my personal favourite things either. Check out this article from HubSpot on what matters to people when they visit your website, and why they abandon them.
It all goes to say that whilst building a website may be a technical thing, at the end of the day, it is all about how we communicate as human beings through a virtual space.
Common Complaints I Hear From Clients About Their Website Revamp
Approximately 80% of my clients come to me because they want to revamp their websites, even though they might have just revamped it recently! Why do they do this? Here is some feedback that I often hear from my clients:
- Problem: The previous designer or developer didn’t do a good job with the website revamp. Many links, plugins, blog posts and things are still broken.
This often has to do with trying to save on cost, and hiring someone who isn’t truly professional or trained in that particular area. - Problem: The design still isn’t what they had in mind, and doesn’t reach out to their audience.
A real-life example: a non-profit organisation that helps sex workers re-integrate into society and protects them from abuse, had feedback from their viewers that the colours used on the website made it seem more like an escort service.
Visual elements and design have a subconscious, psychological impact on your viewers. This is based on not only demographics, but also psychographics, culture and more. - Problem: Their blog posts are not SEO-optimised and are now all in a mess.
This happens a lot with new bloggers. As they gain more knowledge about SEO over time, they realise how important it is and how content, images and social media are crucial for getting their posts seen. - Problem: Businesses that want to add a blog section to their website, but there is currently no option to do so. That or they have no time to write posts, or don’t know how best to go about it.
This can happen if the website wasn’t built with a theme or CMS such as WordPress that has a blog section available.
Some clients aren’t sure how to write a keyword-optimised post. And others simply don’t have the time to manage this aspect of their business, even though it helps with organic traffic and therefore, more visits to their business website in itself. (P.s. We offer SEO writing services here on Blogging Bread!)
Why Not Just Tweak, Instead of Doing a Full Website Revamp?
Knowing all this now, you may be thinking, why not just upgrade my website in bits and pieces, instead of a full on website revamp? You could, but here are some results of what might happen:
- You’ll most likely end up breaking something instead of fixing it.
- Even if you do manage to fix an issue, it’s probably a hack and not the right way to do things. This in turn can slowly add up and impact your website in more ways than one (slows down your website’s loading speed, overrides existing stylesheets, etc).
- Hacks often need more and more patch ups.
- The entire process of cleaning up instead of building a new website from scratch is actually slower, and costs more. And there is no guarantee that everything will be fully fixed after…
- The ultimate issue still hasn’t been dealth with – your website’s foundation isn’t built on solid ground.
Unless they already have a well built website and/or CMS in place, I always advocate for clients to go for a website revamp, instead of constantly trying to erase and refill.
It’s always nice for everyone to start afresh, see something new, and have something clean and sleek. You won’t be the only one who will be excited with your website revamp – your customers or readers will be, too!
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