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You might think your website is recent and up to date, but things change so fast in the world of digital marketing, that even a site created three years ago might be underperforming.

So how do you know if your website is ready for an upgrade? Read on for the warning signs that your website needs some attention.

Your Site Doesn’t Function on Mobile Devices

Does your analytics data tell the story of mobile users exiting your site just seconds after arriving? If so, it might be that your site is not mobile friendly – a quality absolutely vital in today’s digital world. What’s more, Google rolled out ‘mobile-first indexing’ back in March 2018 which means that Google is now using the mobile version of a website for indexing and ranking. If your site isn’t optimised for mobile users it might drop in organic page ranking, as well as having a high bounce rate once users arrive.

Your Site Takes Longer than 3 seconds to Load

Google reports that for every second it takes your site or products to load, it will increase the number of people who drop off, with 53% of mobile site visitors leaving a page that takes longer than three seconds to load.With the growing popularity of portable devices, browsing behaviour has changed dramatically over the last few years and today’s consumers expect fast load times. Read more about how to improve your site load times here.

It takes Longer than 4 Clicks to Reach a Product/Service on your Website

Today’s consumer’s are used to navigating to information they need quickly. Even if your site loads quickly, if it’s not then both simple and clear how to navigate to the products and services you offer, potential customers will lose interest and go elsewhere. If your website is not quickly solving the problems different visitors have to solve, it is not functioning correctly. Make sure a great website user experience is built into every element of your site.

Your Call to Action is Missing or is Not Functioning

What is it you want people to do when they reach your site? Whether it’s to buy a product, get in touch or donate money, every aspect of your site should be designed to help people get to where you want them to go. Remove any barriers to helping your call to action succeed (such as needing to enter a lot of information to make a donation, or pay unexpectedly high shipping costs before checking out) and make your call to action as clear and appealing as possible.

Your Web Designer Needs to Make Even Simple Changes

If your website was designed long ago, it’s likely it wasn’t based on a content management system (such as Wordpress or Joomla). If you need to contact your web designer to alter basic elements such as home page slider images and headline text, it’s definitely time for an upgrade. Modern websites put the power and flexibility in the hands of the website owner, to allow them to be responsive to their business and customer needs. Having a website based on a CMS means it’s easy to make changes on a daily basis, depending on product and seasonal availability, news, demand and interest. It’s likely that old programming also makes your site code harder for search engines to crawl through, meaning your organic ranking might be lower than expected.

If some of these warning signs apply to your website, it’s more than likely that your website is due an upgrade. For help and advice on all aspects of web design, please get in touch.