New year, new me is the old saying when a new year starts. But what about new year, new website?
We know how important it is for your business to stay current, fresh and responsive online as this will reflect how you are as a business to any potential customers. That is why we have put together a list of six key indicators which you can use to determine if your website is in need of a bit of TLC in 2019!
1. It’s not mobile optimised
In a digitally obsessed society, we demand that websites work well on all devices. The three main device groups are computers, mobile phones and tablets. A website that adapts its layout to the screen size of the device being used to view it, is called a responsive website. It is also sometimes referred to as a mobile optimised website. If your website is not responsive, users will have to zoom in to click links and buttons and the overall experience will be frustrating and off-putting.
If that’s not reason enough to make sure your website is responsive, Google now uses a mobile first indexing algorithm, meaning websites that are not responsive will essentially be dropped down the search results, consequently having an impact on your organic search traffic.
2. Editing content is difficult or expensive
If your website was built without a Content Management System (CMS), it can be difficult to make changes without having to ask the developer or web design agency who built it. By having to rely on them each and every time you want to tweak something could end up costing you a lot of money.
3. It’s slow to load
This problem speaks for itself, and having a slow loading website can be one of the biggest indicators that your website needs a refresh. There are many possible causes of a slow website and a whole book could be written on the topic. Some common causes include: outdated programming languages, poorly optimised files, bloated CMS or framework, badly written code etc. If your website takes a while to load, it will make people want to leave, leading to a high bounce rate on Google Analytics.
4. Google ranking is falling
Your website may rank lower on Google and other search engines for many reasons. It could be down to poor site speed, bad SEO, a lack of content, a coding issue… the list goes on and on.
One ranking factor we see missing on a lot of older websites is the lack of Schema Markup, as it was only released in 2011. Schema Markup is becoming increasingly important for your ranking, as Google uses the information to understand the content on the page. The easier it is for Google to read and understand your website, the better chance you have of climbing up the search rankings.
5. Made with Adobe Flash
Older websites may have been built using Adobe Flash, which will make the loading time longer and clunkier. ‘Flash content is usually bulky in size and the bigger the file size is, the slower your pages will load.’ Future websites will not be built with Flash, as Adobe announced it will be killing off Flash in 2020.
6. It’s more than 5 years old
As technology evolves each year, older websites can suffer. If you can’t remember having your website built after 2014, the design, code and SEO could be outdated which may be harming your search rankings and providing a poor user experience.
What next?
At Cariad, we work with WordPress, as this gives our clients the control to edit their webpages themselves and upload media easily! WordPress makes up 26% of the web and is by far the most used CMS. WordPress is constantly releasing new versions that can be installed automatically so you can rest assured that your website is always protected and up to date. It also has a wide variety of plugins that can maintain and protect your website for you, allowing you to focus on the fun tasks like creating and tweaking content to drive traffic and generate leads.
If your current website falls victim to any of the six website signs we’ve listed, get in touch to discuss how Cariad can help build a new website for your business today!
