5 Signs You Need to Hire a Web Designer

Overhauling your business website is a huge undertaking, especially if you haven't updated it in the past 3 years. You update your phone every 2 years, so why are you neglecting your obsolete, poorly managed, or slow website?

There are a lot of signs that your company needs to refresh its branding and design, and that doesn't just start and end with how the website looks. The functionality and performance are equally as important.

Outdated Web Design

It's important to compare your website to others to understand design trends, but sometimes this is difficult to do for busy professionals or those not well-versed in web design. For this reason, it's essential to hire a web design company that can update your website periodically.

Always think of your website as a virtual storefront, because it's the customers' first impression of your company. As a rule, update your website every 3-4 years, even if your design is classic. You will still need to conduct backdoor and coding updates.

Long Load Times

Most websites have a considerable amount of unnecessary bloat. It's true that good websites need a large amount of a mix of images, text, interactivity, and video, but if this media takes too much space on your website, it will cripple load times. It's better to have a simple front page, with pictures that are compressed to be smaller, rather than having an onslaught of music, video, and too much text. You can lose a significant amount of revenue if your website takes too long to load because potential customers will click off to a faster website.

No Mobile or Multiple Browser Support

While it's safe to say that a website built in the '90s or 2000s won't have mobile support or function on all browsers, the same could be true on modern websites. Formatting problems could be present on web browsers that are new or have received multiple updates in the last few years, but having no functionality on mobile is a more significant issue than lack of browser support. Most of your customer base uses their phone to look up information or local businesses, and you miss out on more business and SEO ranking without a mobile equivalent.

Mistakes, Old Information, and Typos

Editing your own work after writing it can make you miss typos or mistakes, which is usually a result of overworking than laziness. The same could be said for old information. We typically have an inverse relationship with the website's age versus the level of interest in fixing apparent errors. Whether it's a simple typo or your company doesn't offer certain services that are still searchable on your website - it's essential to fix these mistakes to build trust.

Invisible on Search Engines

If you type in your company name on Google and can't find your website - that is a massive problem. Typically, most companies will show in the top 5 results if they enter their website or brand name on a search engine, but if you can't find it, your customers won't be able to either. To fix this problem, you will need to fix your keywords on your website and improve engagement, have a clear purpose, and send the right message to your clients. Showing up on irrelevant keywords (like a yoga website showing up for the 'restaurant' keyword) is another problem.