It’s easy to get in a mode of perpetually tweaking and updating your site to try and keep up with the Joneses.
Or you follow some of the big-wig online marketers who have the slickest, trendiest stuff on their website, and you are trying to implement the thousands of random suggestions they put out every week about optimizing your content and site design.
But it’s even easier to fall into the trap after launching your website of hardly ever looking at it again. Even if you’re blogging on a regular basis, you can become site-blind and not see that the design is becoming dated.
Use these 5 signs as a benchmark to see if it’s time to start thinking about a new, updated look for your site:
1. Your home page looks cluttered.
As your business has grown and you’ve tried out different marketing strategies on your site, you’ve been piecing them together without a lot of thought given to how they actually fit visually or how they help your site visitors flow through your site and connect with your message.
After a while, things start to look disjointed and cramped.
2. Your fonts are feeling a little funky (and not in a good way).
Are you still using Times New Roman or Arial on your site? These are classic, standard fonts and will be used in perpetuity, especially in print and advertising.
Not all that long ago, these two and only like 3 or 4 others were consider web-safe and were all you could use on a website. But the world of web fonts is wide open now, and using one of these classics can make your site look dated.
3. You experience website envy when you’re surfing the web and seeing all the amazing things other people are doing.
This is a tough one because I’m a firm believer in not falling for the grass-is-always-greener scam that will suck the life and energy out of you if you’re always comparing yourself to others.
But this is more about an awareness of what’s working for you and what’s not.
That flashy welcome mat page you saw on someone else’s site – would it actually add value to your business and more importantly, value to your site visitors or is it just an obstacle getting in the way of people getting to your great content? Does that ginormous hero image or background video that takes up the whole screen convey a mood that’s relevant to your business or does it just take a really long time load in the background and slow down your site load time?
4. Your website looks exactly the same on a laptop with a 17″ screen as it does on your iPhone
And heaven forbid, you have to pinch and squeeze to zoom in to be able to read anything. In other words, your site isn’t responsive.
You just can’t get away with not having a mobile-friendly site these days.
A ridiculous volume (more than 50%) of web browsing happens on people’s phones or tablets instead of computers anymore, and you absolutely do not want to make visitors wait for it to load and then work to read and move around when they’re on your website.
This means making sure that your content blocks scale and shift automatically for smaller screens. And maybe not every single graphical element or sidebar widget needs to be shown to someone viewing your site on their phone.
5. It’s been more than 2-3 years since you’ve updated your design
I wouldn’t necessarily say that website trends change fast. Mostly what I’ve observed is that a trend will emerge and get used in a small, niche way. Then some of the big web design sites start to talk about it and feature it in their ’25 Examples of Outstanding Website Design’ types of posts.
Then it starts gaining traction in the design community and not only custom site designers but people who create website templates start to incorporate it. And then, after a while, you suddenly notice that it’s everywhere even though it hardly happened overnight.
So that’s not saying you need to redesign your site every 2-3 years. But if it’s been that long since you have, this is a great opportunity to take a look at your site and make an active decision – is it time to redesign or not?
The key here with new website trends is if you like it and it serves a purpose for you or your website audience, then look to incorporate it but not in a trendy way. Use it in subtle a way that will feel timeless and hold up for a while on your site.
Take a good look at your site today with fresh eyes and these 5 signs in mind, and see if it’s time for a little sprucing up.
If you’re ready to inject some new life into your site, give me a holler and let’s chat.
