Top 4 Ways to See if Your Website is Outdated

There’s no getting around it – in today’s digital marketplace, an outdated website hurts your business. It tells your potential customers that your business may not be credible, “with the times,” and financially stable. So, what’s your website saying? If you’re not quite sure if your website’s out-of-date, below are four signs it’s time has come.

1. Difficult to use.

Visitors must be able to find what they’re looking for on your website within the first few moments of landing on it. If your site’s navigation menu is hard to find, confusing, or somewhat convoluted, today’s user is not going to stick around long enough to try and figure it out. Make sure your most important navigation elements are present on every page, and go out of your way to make it easy for users to find their way around your site.

2. Slow page load times.

Users like – and expect – fast sites. If it takes more than two seconds for any of your web pages to load, you’re more than likely going to lose a significant percentage of your audience. Countless studies have shown a direct correlation between slow page load times and high abandonment rates, so make every effort to improve your site’s speed.

Eliminate heavy scripts, ease up on the plugins, and chose images with a lower resolution to encourage faster page load times. Not only will these changes make your users happy, but since site speed is one of the key ranking factors in Google’s “secret sauce,” you’ll position your site for better placement in search engine results as well.

3. Not mobile-friendly.

This is one of the telltale signs of an outdated site. Google has confirmed that more than half of all of its search traffic now comes from mobile devices. If your website is not easy to view (and navigate) on smartphones and tablets, you could be leaving a lot of potential leads and conversions on the table.

Not only that, but Google has also stated in no uncertain terms that mobile-friendliness is now one of the key factors to a good search ranking, especially if the search query originates from a mobile device. You can check how well your site stacks up in the mobile-friendliness department by using Google’s site testing tool, which scores your site based on its speed and responsiveness on mobile devices.

4. Cluttered design.

Give your content some breathing room by going for a streamlined, integrated look, and avoid loud color contrasts or distracting, extraneous page elements. This will give prominence to your most important content, which will help you communicate a clear and concise message.

Keep in mind that your website is often the first thing that people interface with when they come into contact with your business. If it shows any of these above signs, it’s time to contact an agency like 2060 Digital who can update your site so that it can make a positive and memorable first impression on potential customers.