Website design trends change over the years (even months). What we saw in 2006 is quite different from what we see today in 2009. Elements that were popular in 2008 are already seen as outdated. In this article we will review some of the most important aspects to evaluate before deciding on a partial or complete redesign of our website.
1. Your website uses outdated technologies or techniques. The use of techniques or technologies that are very outdated compared to current ones is one of the most important symptoms when deciding whether a new design is needed. •Frames: The successors of the “frames” are the “iframes” and these are recommended only for widgets, affiliate programs and advertising.
If your site uses frames for most of the design, it's definitely time for a new design. Frames have not been used since 2000. Get rid of them.
•Intro Pages: Website introduction pages were all the rage in the early 2000s. Many used flash and/or audio content. Although “Intro” pages are not a totally old-fashioned design technique, their use is becoming less frequent. If your site has a long intro page in Flash, it's probably time for a redesign.
•Outdated Content: Modern sites need to be constantly updated. If you have a “static” site, you need to make sure the content on it is up to date. Many older sites were built without a Content Management System and can be very annoying to update, especially for people who don't know the code. If your website is not built on a CMS, it's probably time for a redesign.
•If your site is built entirely in Flash: Most sites today are not built entirely in Flash. Even those that appear to be, drag content from XML files to avoid the rigidity of information in the code. This is called proper use of technologies, which is not taken into account in most cases. If your site was built entirely in Flash, you are probably suffering from usability and positioning problems. Consider a new design.
•Tables: Tables were used rigorously until a few years ago in the design of Web sites, but tables were never designed to layout Web sites, but rather to format data. The designers imagined that they were only useful for developing complex website structures, however in the next step that the Web known as the Semantic Web will take, the correct use of the elements will be the difference between a well-referenced site and another qualified one. as indecipherable. If your site is built with tables, it's time to think about a new design. •Trendy design elements: If your site was designed with Web 2.0 style buttons (Bright Gradients), it's probably a good idea to think about a new design as soon as trends start to change. Don't wait to be the last site to transition from one trend to another. Stay ahead of the curve and redesign while the concepts still remain fresh. Also, consider a clear direction of fashion elements, or at least, incorporate them in a way that they are easy to change in 6 months.
2. Your current site is practically the same as it was 2 years ago . Websites should be continually updated, if your website looks much the same as it did several years ago, it's probably time to think about a new design. While you don't necessarily have to think about doing a complete redesign every couple of years, you can review which elements on your website look outdated and which could benefit from some improvements.
There will undoubtedly be things that can benefit from adjustments.
3. Your site does not use a CMS. While it is true that we already addressed this point above, the importance of this is such that it deserves its own section. Your website should be built with a content management system (CMS). There are a variety of reasons why, but they really come down to the ability to separate the content from the visual aspect, allowing for quicker updates, and economical in both content and design.
A good CMS allows you to easily create new pages, change text, images and multimedia, and even apply a whole new visual theme to your website without having to re-code all the elements. Most modern sites are built on a CMS except for some simpler ones such as brochure sites or those that require intensive use of Flash, although even these sites can be built using a CMS.
A CMS will make your life easier and, in the long run, will allow you to make changes to your site whenever you want.
4. You get limited search engine effectiveness. Search engine optimization is important to the success of any Web site, while SEO adjustments can be made to existing sites and you have already applied them all without much luck, it may be time to start over. This type of problem is common on sites built on tables where the amount of code is excessive and all this content ends up obfuscating the search engine analysis engines (who see all the code, not just what the end user sees).
The fluency of your design can help you get a very good position in the search engines. Another aspect to consider is to make a new design SEO oriented, this will make it easy for you to maintain your SEO efforts with new content. Make sure it is easy to add all the alt tags and meta information to new images, pages and any other content.
This will ensure that your site continues to perform well in SEO even after months of the redesign.
5. Your website (or part of your site) is not meeting its goal. Search engine optimization is not the only thing to look for, user conversion can be significantly low if your site is not well designed. Your website's statistics program should allow you to track your website's conversion paths (Google Analytics does this).
If there are portions of that path where your visitors get stuck, it's likely a signal for a redesign. It's important that your users have at hand the easiest way to perform certain tasks you want them to do, such as buy a product, read a particular article, or contact you.
6. Your main competitor already has a new design for their website.
It's easy to throw together a major redesign if all of your competitors are still running the same websites they had 5 years ago. But if your main competitor has already redesigned their website, it might be a good time to redesign yours as well.
This may sound like a very superficial reason for a redesign, but if a competitor has new features that make its website more visitor-friendly, the site could probably benefit from similar changes. Whatever you do, don't copy your competition's new design. Look at what they've done and identify where there may be improvements that you can factor into yours.
See where there are navigation bottlenecks or places where the site seems confusing. Learn from your mistakes and make an even better site. Stand out from your competition’s site by making it more user-friendly and paying attention to visitors they’re losing. Another advantage of redesigning after your competition is that they will probably be hesitant to try to outdo you, since they’ve already made a significant investment in the recent design, but keep in mind that in either case the goal should always be to take advantage of the opportunities of change.