Today, your company's website is most probably your most important communications and/or sales channel. No wonder that you care much about this piece of technology. But when is the right time for your company to think about a redesign of the current setup? Here's a list of five indicators that might signal you to take some action.

Your Website is not Responsive

That's usually one of the key indicators for you to think about a website redesign. Did you know that on an average day 80% of internet users use a smartphone to surf the web? That's almost 15% more mobile than desktop usage. Mobile first is thus not just a buzzword, it is a reality that is being confirmed on a statistical basis every day. [1]

Your Website Loads too Slowly

We've all had experiences with slow websites. They're pretty annoying and not fun to use. Actually, 40% of a website's users will leave a page if it takes more than three seconds for it to load? Also, data shows this is bad on a computer but on a mobile device it is even worse. Consider this: Key engagement metrics such as average time on site, pages per visit, or bounce rate already lag behind on smartphone usage. If it now also takes longer to load, you can be almost certain to lose your valuable visits and your conversion rate will take a hit. [2]

You Are Experiencing a High Bounce Rate

That's certainly not a good sign and you should definitely do something about it. Essentially, what it means is that you manage to get people to visit your website and they immediately decide to leave again. That's pretty bad, right? Well, the good news is: if you do collect your data well the internet will also give you some answers about what to improve. It does not necessarily tell you to redo everything but you will have some strong arguments up your sleeve on where to invest your budget next and why. In case you're missing that valuable information, I would strongly advise you to consult with an analytics expert. He will then also know, if a redesign could be an option for you to consider. [3]

You Have Expensive License Costs From a Closed Source Provider

If you do use closed source software, you know what I am talking about: such a model comes attached with expensive license costs. And that's just the cost for you to be able to use the software, development for your system will additionally strain your budget. With open source systems such as Drupal, that's for free ā€“ no strings attached. Just like with a closed source system you will also get an incredibly powerful system, enterprise-ready security standards and the help of a community with thousands of developers. It's pretty simple math: add the cost of your closed source system over the years and start investing it in software that will more efficiently generate business value for you.

Your Current Website Setup Is Hard and Expensive to Maintain

It's absolutely normal that your content structure and the requirements towards its digital representation changes over time. As your business advances so will your core digital tools and therefore the requirements to connect their data pools to your business' online representation via clever interfaces. If you spend too little time cultivating and evolving your system this process will even speed up. In such situations, this often results in steep investments towards an old system or it will be getting more difficult to add the right content where, how and when it needs to be there for your online customer. Most definitely, that's just one symptom that is then supplemented by the frustrating experience for your administrators that cultivate your platform ā€“ no wonder that content quality will suffer. Does this sound familiar? Then a redesign might be the way out of this vicious cycle.

There are certainly many other influencing factors that might trigger you to think about redesigning your website. In my experience and in almost any case, it boils down to the question of what your online customers are expecting from you as well as from your online business. If you do understand them well this can much more easily be translated in technical and visual requirements. In turn, you get to better understand the ROI and the question of when and if to redesign your website can be answered much more reliably.

If you do find yourself in a position where two or more of the above situations are a match, I would strongly suggest you to bring together your key stakeholders to a roundtable and define a strategy to tackle this situation. It's as simple as that, there is no second chance for the first impression.

[1] storage.googleapis.com/think/docs/twg-how-people-use-their-devices-2016.pdf

[2] thinkwithgoogle.com/articles/mobile-page-speed-load-time.html

[3] thinkwithgoogle.com/interviews/winning-the-zero-moment-of-truth-measure-success.html