Is there a right answer?
Before I start delving into the ‘why’ of this subject I need to explain the ‘when’ bit! Now in my experience you only need to update a website IF you think its out of date or it no longer reflects your brand or even if you simply don’t feel proud of it anymore. You may find there are simple changes you need to make such as new staff members, new products and adding blogs, that’s all good.
There is no exact answer to this question as every website is different. Never aim for perfect as there is no such thing. Only ever aim for what you think looks great and you want to show it off to the world.
Brand Revamps
As your business evolves you will find that your website will evolve as well. When your branding changes, everything changes! Your brand is at the centre of everything to do with your business. I could go on forever about brand but I’ll only focus on your website here. You might have had a brand rethink which means you are going to want to reflect it on your website. Colours, fonts, language and of course your logo. You will more than likely engage with a web designer to help you with this as it’s not a quick fix, redesigning your website takes time and lots of thought.
If your clients see a new logo with funky new colours and a fresh new look on your social pages, then they visit your website and see the old version of your business brand, that doesn’t look great. They may be confused and wonder if you’re still in business and walk away to another site. Not good.
So essentially, brand revamp = revamping your website look, feel, style, the lot! Don’t forget your business cards, apparel and anything else that’s ‘branded’.
SEO
This is a whole big subject on its own. SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) should be at the heart of any changes you make to your website. If it’s not, you will start to see changes in your analytics. Visitors may start to drop off, engagements and clicks will diminish and you’ll wonder why.
If you are updating your website yourself, always have in mind what your clients would be searching for. Say for instance you might be a beauty therapist and your clients will be searching for manicures or eye lash extensions, make sure you have these words in your text, also known as copy.
Make your copy human-readable, it has to make sense and is not repetitive. Google does not like text that’s repeated over and over. It used to be the case years ago where you could do this to satisfy what is known as ‘key words’ but it’s not the case anymore. In fact, it has the opposite effect and will damage your search position, also known as ranking.
If you make any change to your website, make sure it fits in with your SEO. If you want some help with this, take a look at Yoast as an SEO plugin to WordPress or you can also contact me at Woof Designs to see if I can help you out.
In Conclusion
- Update your website whenever you feel you need to.
- Think of everything the updates might have an effect on, such as SEO.
- Ask for help if you don’t like the idea of doing it yourself; it can be daunting.
- Make any update readable by a human not just a robot!
- Be proud of your website, shout it to the world, never feel you have to make excuses for it.
I’ve only touched on a few reasons here when and why to update your website. There are plethora of other reasons you might want to tweak it, update it, remodel it or even rebrand it. Short answer is, if you do it right and think of all the points your changes have an effect on and cover them off, you’ll be OK.
Any questions, just let me know.
