Why would you want to redesign your website in 2020.
Like many design industries, web design is constantly evolving. Some designers choose to play with new ideas as they come along, but the majority of websites stay the same. Most consumers don’t notice each nuance and trend, so it’s not always necessary to keep updating your website. But every few years, the rest of the web catches up. New trends become more commonplace and consumers start to notice – consciously or otherwise; their expectations change. The difference between old and new becomes greater and it becomes necessary for you to redesign your website.
In 2020, much of the internet has changed compared with a few years ago. Websites now:
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- Have more breathing space/white space
- Make use of larger, more legible font
- Are often full width (not boxed)
- Are higher resolution
- Have better user interfaces
- Load quicker (generally)
Even if your website is mobile friendly, it could still be outdated. Google released it’s mobile-friendly update in April 2015, but web design has changed remarkably since then. If your current website was designed or re-designed during the “mobilegeddon” phenomenon, it could be time for a re-design.
Redesign your website if it is more than 3 years old. It’s probably out of date.
But how significant that is depends on whether your website’s working for you or not. There’s no point updating your website unless it’s going to benefit your business. Ask yourself:
- Can people easily take action?
- Is it clear what you want the visitor to do?
- Does the website website generate enough business?
- Is your website slow to load? Are there too many wiz-bangs?
If your content looks like a big wall of text, that’s probably a sign something needs to change. Most people don’t have time to decipher paragraphs of more than a couple of lines, especially on mobile. Web design in 2020 makes text more manageable (in general), by making it bigger, more legible and giving it more space.
More signs to look for when deciding if your website is outdated.
- It resolves poorly on mobile devices. This is an answer you can get on Google’s mobility-friendly test. The test will tell you deficiencies that need to be corrected, including load time. Speaking of load time…
- Slow load time. If your website loads in 2 seconds or less, you’re in good shape. Beyond that, you start to lose prospects and visitors. Surveys have found that 40% of visitors will leave a site that takes 3 or more seconds to load.
- Your website is Flash based. Many devices, especially those running IOS will not display a website using Flash. Google no longer displays Flash-based websites in their search results. If your site is using Flash, it’s time for a reboot.
- Your bounce rate is high. A bounce rate is the percentage of visitors that leave your site after visiting just one page. An excellent bounce rate is under 40% but above 25%. Being below 25% indicates there could be issues with your site.
- Security. Hackers don’t sleep, in 3 years they have figured out how to hack your site. They just haven’t gotten to it yet. WordPress uses PHP as the preferred language for their websites. Most WordPress sites built before 2017 were built on PHP version 5. That version reached end of life on January 1, 2019. That means there have been no security updates since then. There are plugins available to check your PHP version. Search “WordPress PHP plugin” in your browser to find them.
So you’ve reached the conclusion that it’s in your best interest to redesign your website. What do you need to get your website up to 2020 standards and functionality?
Factors for a successful website redesign
- Your website must be user friendly, especially on mobile devices. That means the text must be easy to read, easy to navigate and pleasing to look at.
- It must be fast loading. Use adaptive images, caching and compress your content.
- Make sure the new site is SEO ready. We have an article on SEO for a website redesign detailing why this is important and what to do.
- Your content should be well organized. The content should have a user friendly flow to it. The menus should be well organized. Use internal links to help guide the visitor from page to page in a logical order. An added plus is that internal links help with SEO.
- Aesthetically pleasing. There are 1000’s of templates you can use or start from scratch. Points to remember include refrain from crowding (use more white space), use an eye-catching font and keep it to 2 or 3 colors.