Five Reasons Why It’s Time
to Reinvent Your Website
Websites are forever evolving. From static HTML pages to websites using WordPress as a CMS and now dynamic API-driven websites. One thing is common between all of them, if they’re not maintained properly, they’ll become outdated and prone to errors. So if you’re not constantly reinventing your site, your customers will find a competitor who is.
Here are a few ways to make sure you’re protecting your investment and keeping up with the latest trends.
1. Mobile is not slowing down, so keep up.
According to Smart Insights, mobile has grown so significantly that now 51% of consumers are more reliant on using their phones to browse and shop online. Popular e-commerce sites like Booking.com are reporting that up to 78.6% of their traffic is coming from mobile devices. This is why most website designs start with a mobile first approach and why responsive design is now a requirement. However, having just a responsive design is not enough anymore.
Having mobile specific content can make all the difference because users aren’t inclined to read a block of text due to having your content designed on a desktop.
2. Google is not what it used to be.
Your site’s SEO may follow best practices, but behind the scenes Google’s search algorithm changes more than you know. According to Moz, already in 2016, more than three major updates were made to their algorithm that might affect your traffic.
Although Google reigns supreme as a search engine, customers are finding products and services more often via social discovery networks like Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
3. Third party services are inconsistently changing.
Having a site without any third party services is rarely an option; however, sometimes having these services unmaintained can hinder your site dead. Ever click on update site or plugin in WordPress and found your site broken? Yup, so have I. Third party services and plugins are constantly changing and being updated, which can lead to your site having broken functionality or design. Many service providers provide documentation during their updates; make sure to read what has been updated before you inadvertently click “update.”
4. Bring your social and user generated content to your site.
How well your visitors enjoy your site’s function and interactive features when they are browsing your site with a mobile device depends on the extent of the mobile design. To be mobile friendly, your site should: be easy to navigate from a small screen, contain interactive functions working exactly like they do on the desktop browser, and have a layout that presents the most important information first.
5. Have a clear and simple payment process.
With so many e-commerce processing options available, it’s important to really analyze your audience. From direct credit card processing to PayPal and ApplePay, it’s crucial to know what they prefer so you can enable those options. A recent poll showed that 25% of all buyers use PayPal as their preferred payment method and that ApplePay is slowly losing its trend. Baymard Institute calculates an average of 68.63% cart abandonment rate, meaning you must simplify your checkout process. How many steps does the user take before their payment is complete? If it passes more than two, then you’re doing it wrong. Consider breaking your form fields into two rows instead to reduce the amount of steps.
With these five steps in mind, reinvention doesn’t always mean jumping on the latest trend in web technology. Sometimes, the use of new API-driven websites can be exactly what you’ve been looking for; however, sometimes it can have negative effects. JavaScript, the language commonly used to build these front-end frameworks, can actually break your site’s SEO if not set up correctly. If your site is not as dynamic as you anticipated and want weekly maintenance, it may be a better option to go with a simple CMS to save time and costs. Identify what your needs are and implement the best solution, not necessarily the best technology.
