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How to know If it’s time for a website redesign

By Web Design & Development

There’s no getting around it – redesigning your website can seem like an intimidating project. After all, it’s how your company shown to the world.

How can you know if your company will gain a return on investment on a redesign?

Often overlooked, how your site looks to a potential customer can have huge effects on your sales, credibility and perception in the mind of the public. Without a background in design and lead generation, it can be hard to differentiate if it’s creating the most traction.

The good news is, there are a few key issues that could indicate it’s time for a redesign, and are easy to spot if you know what you’re looking for:

1. Dated imagery
One of the first things users notice when they go to a website is what and how visuals are incorporated. Too many generic, unoriginal or dated stock photography on a website, creates immediate questions in the mind of the user.

2. Poor legibility
Word to the wise: if your background is navy blue, black is a bad font choice. Too often, important information is left unread simply because the color scheme is off or the font is hard to read. Illegible does not equal inventive. With ADA compliance being more and more in the forefront consider a classic white background and black font combo.

3. Analytics are telling
To give a concrete example, let’s say that part of the redesign plan involves incorporating more content. All the research to this point says that we’re not giving our customers enough information, and they want more. We’re experiencing a high dropout rate when it comes to our traffic. So, we add new pages, give more of a backstory into our company, and link to new content.

4. The site looks dated
If your site looks like it was created in the days of dial-up internet and huge computer monitors, it’s acting as a red flag for potential customers. Make sure to avoid references to old news stories, dated terminology and, arguably most importantly, stale design. Utilizing the latest development frameworks ensures a site that works on all platforms.

5. A lack of mobile responsiveness
In today’s world, we get most of our information on the go. Think of how much more time is spent in front of a phone versus desktop. According to a SimilarWeb study, the percentage of mobile device website visits grew from 57% to 63% between 2016 and 2017, and has continued to grow in the years since. If we take this data into consideration, it only makes sense that your target market should be able to have a mobile optimized experience with your brand.

“All things being equal, a site that is effective for twice as long has twice the ROI.”

If we look at this through the lens of a cost per wear analogy, it is easy to see that, while it might seem like a large undertaking, a website redesign can have a positive return on investment. For example, if you buy a $200 coat that you plan on wearing pretty much every day during the winter months, your cost per wear is a little over $2 per use, which immediately makes the initial price seem much more reasonable. The same logic can be applied to taking on a website redesign. While you are investing resources and manpower into the project, you are reaping the benefits in the long-term.

All things being equal, a site that is effective for twice as long has twice the ROI. A great site will produce results for five years or more. A bad site will need to be redesigned within two years or less.

If you want to stay competitive, your annual budget needs a line item for digital marketing that includes website updates.

If you are currently getting 1,000 visitors and 50 are turning into contacts, and 5 of those become customers, you can make some calculations. For example, if you were to change that to 2,000 visitors, you could see the other numbers grow based on volume.

To give a concrete example of how effective a website redesign can be, let’s take a look at what it did for one of our clients. RDM Shrimp farm raises delicious, fresh, Indiana-grown shrimp. While the company was doing well, they struggled to communicate who they were via their website. With messaging, visuals, and lead generation in place, their inquiries jumped from zero to five to ten emails per day.

While this process may seem overwhelming, it is important to remember how important e-commerce is in today’s business landscape. A simple upgrade to your online presence can make all the difference in the minds of your customers, driving brand awareness and, in the long-term, sales. So, take the leap. Upgrade your brand in the eyes of consumers, and redefine yourself for the digital age.

More About ZIV

ZIV has offices in greater Kansas City and Denver, CO. Whether it’s creating a brand, implementing a digital solution to disrupt an industry, transforming a customer’s experience to gain loyalty, or executing a marketing strategy for needed growth – they’ve got you covered. Explore their capabilities and past work at letsziv.com.

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By Web Design & Development

“My WordPress website doesn’t need updates or maintenance, after all, it’s not like I collect important information!”

Have you heard someone say this? Have you said it yourself? Many businesses let their Drupal or WordPress core, plugins, and PHP sit with no maintenance, convinced that it will be fine as long as they’re not collecting passwords, email, or payment information. Even worse, some website owners feel their sites don’t need an SSL certificate or firewall.

But did you know that even simple sites run the risk of being hacked and handing their visitors over to phishing sites, spam, and viruses?

With an ever-growing list of risks and possible ways hackers can use your site for their own benefit, even low-traffic sites that do not collect emails are at risk of being infiltrated or marked as unsafe. Yet how can these sites be used? And, more importantly, how can it be stopped? Here are a few common ways sites can be exploited by hackers, putting your business and customers at risk:

The Risks of an Unsecured Website

Spam Injection
Your clean site is accepted by Google as safe, making both internal and external links considered free of risk. By planting spam links in forms and links, your hacked site is helping spam businesses boost their SEO and site traffic– while possibly causing your website to be marked as unsafe. Hackers can also redirect your content to their own content, causing their SEO to boost even if no one visits their page.

Email Hijacking
Websites can also be used to send spam email as your website has a safe, non-blacklisted IP address and will more easily get past spam filters. In this way, harmless spam can turn into malicious viruses. Even worse? Your IP address could be blacklisted due to the spam, making it much more difficult to reach your customers in the future.

Malware and Ransomware
A step further than spam, hackers can modify websites so malware is installed onto the computer of anyone who visits the website, downloading viruses onto the devices of your loyal customers. Ransomware can also be downloaded in this way, causing files to be stolen and encrypted with the hackers demanding payment in exchange for returning the files.

Phising Pages
With a clean bill of health from search engines and trust from visitors, hackers love to use smaller websites for pages that will extract sensitive information from users. This includes injecting items such as fake login pages, donation pages, or purchase pages onto an otherwise safe website.

“Even simple sites run the risk of being hacked and handing their visitors over to phishing sites, spam, and viruses.”
What can you do to protect your website?

Sounds a bit daunting, doesn’t it? No website is too small for hackers to take notice and use it for their own devices. Yet there’s good news! With precautions in place, your risk can be greatly reduced.

SSL Certificate
Becoming a web standard, it is crucial to have an SSL certificate (what makes your website https:// instead of http://) to protect and encrypt data. In addition to keeping visitors safe, Google no longer ranks websites that do not have an SSL certificate, and will discourage visitors from visiting your unsecured site. Make certain that you ‘force’ the SSL, so even if a visitor types in “http://website.com” they’ll be taken to the secure “https://website.com”.

Keep your site up to date
When kept up to date, a WordPress website causes no extra security concerns. Make certain that plugins and themes are updated regularly, and that you have a WordPress specific host ensuring the WordPress core and PHP is updated.

Backup your site
What if your website is hacked? Keep regular backups of websites ready to replace the current site. Just don’t forget to change your passwords on the backup!

Install a security plugin
WordPress has a variety of plugins designed to keep website owners informed while blocking attacks and keeping website safe.

With these steps in place, you’re on the road to protecting your site, your users, and your business.

Want to keep your mind on the day-to-day instead of checking to see what plugins need updated or how the next PHP update will affect your website? ZIV has managed, firewalled WordPress hosting to keep sites safe, backed up, and secure. Want to focus on growing your business and leave the security and updates to us? Let us know!

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ZIV has offices in greater Kansas City and Denver, CO. Whether it’s creating a brand, implementing a digital solution to disrupt an industry, transforming a customer’s experience to gain loyalty, or executing a marketing strategy for needed growth – they’ve got you covered. Explore their capabilities and past work at letsziv.com.

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