Creating a website can be a difficult but rewarding process for your business. It takes time, creativity, and dedication to push out that first website and once it’s done, you can just leave that part of the business behind you, moving onto other goals. Then again, nothing lasts forever.

Even if you design a website for your current goals and vision, it’s always difficult to anticipate the entire future growth and expansion of your business. As your business changes, you can make minor updates and keep the website fresh, but at a certain point, it may need a complete redesign. When is this point?

Some signs that show it’s time for a website redesign include:

Business Growth and/or Change

Businesses change over time. Maybe your business’ goals, visions, mission statement, products, services, and/or size have experienced a shift. As a result, your website should change in order to accommodate the differences within your business. The website should always be a reflection of the current state of your business and should be restructured if necessary to represent it.

Website Look and Feel

If your website hasn’t been updated in a decade, it’s highly possible that the look and feel of the website (as well as technologically) could be out of date. Aesthetics change over time. What may seem hip and modern 10 years ago probably isn’t the case anymore. Some signs of an outdated website include:

• The website is served up in frames (loaded in multiple individual panes within the browser) – Framed websites are not bookmark friendly nor are they search engine friendly.
• Depending on the website purpose, it uses a splash page with a “click to enter” link in order to get to the main website – In most instances, splash pages only hinder users from getting to the real content that they came to your site to see.
• It uses a tiled background that obscures the foreground text – If the text is important, it should be as clear and legible as possible.
• It contains a message that suggests that the website is “best viewed in [insert browser name]” – Most of the time when a message like this is displayed, it is because the website isn’t designed to be cross-browser compatible. Modern browsers still have some incompatibility issues, but modern website design can be made to work in all major browsers with little incompatibility problems.

The majority of the above are signs of an unprofessionally designed website. As such, your business could lose credibility if it appears outdated.

Your Own Thoughts

You should feel proud of your website. If you have to apologize to potential clients or users when interacting with them because you feel your site has out-of-date information, poor design, poor content, is hard to use, or any other reasons, it will reflect poorly on you and your business.

Search Engine Results

If your site is designed poorly, chances are, it won’t rank very well in search engine results. Some signs of a poorly designed site for search engine optimization include:

• The architecture of the site is convoluted and confusing. If you don’t know where to find the pages you are looking for, most likely, search engine spiders are having the same problem. Simplifying and designing a clear hierarchy of links and navigation would go a long way in alleviating this problem.
• Most of the text contents are images. If it’s textual content, it should be displayed as text in the HTML.
• Your site is in flash. Search engines have come a long way in being able to crawl through a flash website, but the jury is still out on how effective it is. To be on the safe side, important content should not be flash-based.

Sales, Leads, and Inquiries

A website should be an informational site for potential clients and users, but it should also be able to acquire sales, leads, and inquiries. A lot of older sites were designed almost as a brochure in a website format. These types of sites weren’t designed to draw in interactions from clients and users. Most likely, these sites lack some essentials, such as:

• Call-to-actions – Call-to-actions are buttons and links that guide a visitor to do something on your website, whether it is to buy an item, submit their contact information, or inquire about something.
• Newsletter, white papers, blogs, and other information – Newsletter sign-ups allow you to gather contact information from your clients and allow you to send them regular information on your updates. White papers, blogs, and other information pieces are just ways to improve your overall website content. Blogs also help to improve interactions on your website through the comments section and keeps content fresh.
• Contact forms – Contact forms make it easier for your users to contact you. No need to fire up their own e-mail client.

These are just some of the signs that hint at the need of a website redesign. The important thing is in identifying all of them before embarking on a website redesign project.

Related posts:

1. Search Engine Friendly Web Design – SMX West 2009

There are many factors to consider when designing a landing page. Some of them include:

1. Headline

This is the most important factor to a landing page. The headline is the first thing a viewer sees when coming to the landing page. As such, it needs to do the following in a concise manner:

• Tell the user that they are either at the right or wrong place
• If it is the right place, compel the user to continue the process

Try to keep the headline short, concise, and to the point, while at the same time, informative enough to keep the user within the funnel. Using keywords within the headline can help in both cases.

2. Call to Action

The Call to Action is anything on the landing page that tells the user to take action. Call to Actions should be obvious (if something looks clickable, it should be clickable) and visible above the fold and below the fold. The phrase used within the Call to Action should be active and concise.

Example: instead of “more info”, use, “get a free consultation today!”

It is also important to keep the number of Call to Actions to a minimum. If there are too many Call to Actions, it may become confusing for the user.

3. Product Benefits

Always list the most compelling offers first. A nice and clean way to provide product benefits is by using a bulleted list.

4. Opening Paragraph

The opening paragraph should follow the headline. The text needs to be able to entice the viewer into finding out more. The opening paragraph should also be relatively short but informative. If more information is required to describe the product or service, do so in the Product Benefits section or on an additional page that can be linked from the landing page.

5. Testing

Always test, test, and test some more. How do you know if the headline you’re using is compelling enough? How do you know if the Call to Action at the top is effective? Which product benefit is the most important to the viewer? All of these can be answered by testing. A landing page can never be set in stone. There are always ways of improving conversion rates.

Related posts:

1. Search Engine Friendly Web Design – SMX West 2009

5 Basic Rules of Web Design

When centered on the user, there are specific rules that form the foundation of successful web design. These are:

1. Easy to Read

The code and text should be written in a way where it is easy to read. It should continue the “scent of information” (contain relevant keywords from acquisition source) so that a user can easily discern that they are in the right place.

2. Easy to Navigate

The web site should be, first and foremost, designed for users and searchers, not for search engines. All elements that appear to be clickable should be and users should have a sense of where they are at when navigating the site.

3. Easy to Find

Being easy to find refers to both the before and after of users arriving on a page. The web site should be found/linked from major search engines/relevant sites. Important elements and contents should be found above the fold (portion of the site that is shown upon initial loading without scrolling). Contact information should be easy to find, usually in the header, footer, about us, or contact area.

4. Consistent layout, design & labeling

Consistency communicates a sense of trust, security, reliably, and branding. Consistency is based on many factors, such as, use of space, color scheme, logo usage, placement of content, etc.

5. Quick to download

Speed is determined by both actual and perceived download. If what users want is hard to see at first, then the download appears to be slower. Larger downloads can be applicable if the important elements can be found easily.

3 Building Blocks to SEO

The build blocks to SEO are centered on how crawlers/robots can index your site. These are:

1. Text Indexing

If the content of a site does not have any text or “indexable” content, it won’t rank well, which in turn, makes it difficult to find.

Some other important factors:

• A site should make use of Primary Text, which includes title tags, visible copy, text within the header, and anchor tags/links as all search engines index these and use them in determining rankings.
• If time allows, a site should make use of Secondary Text, which includes meta tags, filenames/domain names, and alt text, as only some search engines index these.
• Breadcrumbs can help a lot, giving a sense of organization to users, as well as provide relevant keywords to links.
• If applicable, try to use captions for images because visible copy weighs more heavily than alt text.

2. Follow Links

The link component refers to internal liking within the site. These should factor in site navigation scheme, as well as other page interlinking.

Some other factors include:

Navigation menu

From most search engine friendly to least friendly:

Text Links > Nav buttons > Image Maps > Form/DHTML Menus > Flash

If using non-text links, always provide 2 forms of navigation. 1 for target audience and 1 for search engines. The search engine friendly one can be a navigation placed within the footer.

Embedded Text Links

Text links placed within visible copy can help to enhance usability and search engine friendliness. However, it is important to not overdo it. Too many embedded text links can decrease usability and legibility.

Site Maps

Site maps do not refer to the URL list that can be submitted to search engines. In this case, a site map refers to a page that provides users a hierarchy to your site structure. When creating a site map, it should not just be a list of URLs or links. Having annotations great helps with legibility.

Others

There a number of other helpful ways to improve usability and search engine friendliness. Some involved linking to related pages, upselling, and having a horizontal navigation vs. a vertical navigation.

3. Site Popularity (Link Development)

Popularity is based on number of external links, the quality of external links, and click popularity.

Some other factors that influence popularity include:

• Having substantial and unique content
• How other sites link to your site (What is the anchor text being used? What are the annotations?)
• Having keyword rich text on homepage
• Having at least one crawl-friendly navigation (even if it’s the footer)
• Having links to relevant information/sites
• Having a visible site map

Miscellaneous

Some other factors to think about in regard to search engine optimization and web design:

• Always design for searchers, not search engines
• When redesigning a site, SEO should be put into consideration in the initial phases and not after the site is built
• Test the usability of a site to determine the effectiveness of a site. If users can’t find the information, most likely, it’s not good for SEO either

Related posts:

1. Signs That Show It’s Time for a Website Redesign
2. 5 Best Practices for Landing Page Design