Most business websites don’t fail dramatically. They just quietly stop pulling their weight.
The site is still online. The phone number still works. But enquiries have dried up, it looks a little tired next to your competitors, and you’ve got a nagging feeling that it’s not doing what it should.
We build and look after websites for businesses across Eastbourne and East Sussex, and a lot of our web design projects start with a site that “still works” but isn’t really working. Here are the signs we look for.
1. It Doesn’t Work Properly on a Phone
For most local businesses, the majority of visitors are on their phone. If customers have to pinch and zoom to read your text, if buttons are too small to tap, or if your menu doesn’t work properly on a small screen, you’re losing them.
Google also looks at the mobile version of your site first when deciding how to rank it. A poor mobile experience hurts you twice: fewer visitors find you, and fewer of those who do get in touch.
2. It’s Slow
People are impatient, especially on mobile data. If your site takes more than a few seconds to load, a good chunk of visitors will hit the back button and choose someone else.
Slow sites are usually the result of oversized images, bloated themes, too many plugins or cheap, overcrowded hosting. Some of that can be fixed. Sometimes the foundations are the problem and a rebuild is the better investment.
3. You Can’t Update It Yourself
If changing your opening hours or adding a new photo means emailing your web designer and waiting a week, or if you’ve lost the login completely, that’s a problem. Your website should be something you’re comfortable updating, or something that’s actively looked after for you.
4. It Doesn’t Bring in Enquiries
This is the big one. A website isn’t a brochure, it’s a tool for winning work. If you can’t remember the last time someone said “I found you on your website”, something is wrong.
Common culprits include no clear call to action, a phone number buried at the bottom of the page, contact forms that don’t work (we see this surprisingly often), and pages that talk about the business rather than about what the customer needs.
5. You’re Not Showing Up on Google
If your website was built without any thought to SEO, it can be very hard to rank, no matter how good it looks. Missing page titles, a single page trying to cover every service, no local information and a slow, poorly structured site all make Google’s job harder.
A redesign is the perfect moment to fix the structure properly, rather than bolting SEO onto a site that wasn’t built for it.
6. It Looks Dated Next to Your Competitors
Design trends move on, and customers do notice. A website that looked sharp in 2016 can now look like a business that isn’t trading any more. Fair or not, people judge the quality of your work by the quality of your website.
Have a look at the top three competitors that come up when you search for your service locally. If their sites look more modern, more trustworthy and easier to use than yours, that’s a sign.
7. It’s Not Secure or Not Being Maintained
No padlock in the browser bar, a WordPress install that hasn’t been updated in years, plugins that are no longer supported. These aren’t just cosmetic issues. An unmaintained site is a security risk, and a hacked website can damage your reputation and your Google rankings very quickly. We’ve written about how we keep WordPress sites secure if you want to see what proper maintenance looks like.
8. Your Business Has Changed but Your Website Hasn’t
New services, a new area, a new team, new branding, a new office. If your website still describes the business you were five years ago, it’s sending the wrong message to the customers you want today.
Redesign or Refresh?
Not every tired website needs to be thrown away. Sometimes a refresh, meaning new content, better photos, a faster host and some layout tweaks, is enough. Other times the underlying platform is so outdated or poorly built that patching it costs more in the long run than starting again.
An honest web designer should be able to tell you which camp you’re in, and why. If you’re curious how long a full project typically takes, we’ve covered that in How Long Does It Take to Design a New Website?
Where FYDUS Comes In
We design and build websites for businesses of all sizes, from local trades to professional services. Every site we build includes:
- A fully responsive design that works properly on phones, tablets and desktops
- Clear calls to action designed to turn visitors into enquiries
- Solid SEO foundations from day one, not bolted on afterwards
- Fast, secure hosting and ongoing maintenance options
- A local team you can actually phone when you need something changed
You can see some of our recent work in our case studies.
If two or three of the signs above sound familiar, it’s probably time for a conversation. We’re always happy to take an honest look at your current site and tell you what we’d do.