As designers, we fully admit that we’re suckers for a beautiful website and it can be *very* tempting to redesign our own on a whim just because.

However, in reality creating a new website that perfectly encapsulates your brand and does everything that you need it to do is a costly exercise, both in effort and financially. It’s worth noting that many new websites take months to create and can easily cost tens of thousands of dollars so it’s important to consider whether it’s right for your specific situation. To help you determine whether it’s the right time to undertake a website redesign, we’ve listed below our primary reasons why we would recommend it:

Design

This is perhaps the most obvious reason why a redesign of your website could be a good idea, specifically if the current design looks outdated or isn’t aligned with your ideal audience. According to Statista, in 2020 alone, over two billion people worldwide purchased goods or services online, with sales exceeding 4.2 trillion US Dollars. Those figures are growing year on year which means a hefty dose of competition and a customer base who are spoilt for choice when it comes to deciding where to spend their hard-earned money. Both of these factors mean that providing customers with a seamless and enjoyable shopping experience online is now essential and making do with an outdated site will likely cost you customer loyalty and revenue.

However it’s not only about the customer experience. Brands evolve and change over time, and with those changes comes the need to refine your website to best showcase your products or services and the aesthetics of your brand as a whole. If you feel that your website no longer reflects where your business is currently or even where you aspire to be in the future, chances are that it’s time to give it an overhaul.

Functionality

As brands grow, their specific needs change and this is particularly true with websites. Whether it’s an increasing product catalogue, different services, additional marketing needs or more complex integrations, changes and additions to the functionality of a website are inevitable. But trying to shoe-horn these changes into an existing site is usually a recipe for disaster as it wasn’t built to accommodate such features and can cause issues with useability or at the very least leave you with a mish-mash of a site that doesn’t make sense. Investing the time and money to create a purpose-built site that is up-to-date with your current needs and has your requirements in mind will make it easier for both your customers and team, ensuring a seamless process from purchasing through to fulfilment.

Conversions

While aesthetics and ease of use are important aspects of a good website, another key point is how well it manages to turn potential customers into actual customers. Your website is your digital shopfront, and as such its primary purpose is to bring you more business, whether its leads for your services or sales of your products. If it’s not achieving either of those things despite getting traffic from your advertising, word of mouth, marketing channels or search engines, the problem lies in how it’s converting, and to be blunt, a site that is failing to convert is effectively useless. This is a key scenario when investing in a website redesign would be a good idea, allowing you to approach it from the ground up and tailor it to your ideal customer and how they browse / shop. It also allows you to test different elements and see how each impacts your conversion rate, resulting in a website that is aligned with and appealing to your customers and provides the seamless experience they’re looking for.