6 Signs That Your Website Needs Upgrading

• By Sarah
• General News
• 817 Views
• 17th May 2023

Even the most well designed websites can unfortunately date quickly in today’s fast-moving tech environment. Outdated content, visuals, coding and and plugins can all adversely affect customer satisfaction, search engine rankings, and even compromise the safety and security of the website. 

Delaying an upgrade to save on costs can prove to be counterproductive, because an outdated website can corrode your brand’s position in the marketplace and will ultimately lead to reduced performance and sales. Here are six signs that your website needs upgrading or redesigning. 

 

 

The website contains legacy code

Over the years, websites can go through various phases of development without ever being fully redeveloped from scratch. This can result in outdated code that is nonetheless vital to the functioning of the website, and can’t be removed or improved on without risking the complete failure of the whole site.

As time goes on, the developer or team who wrote the original code are the only ones who understand it, and they have since moved on to pastures new. Therefore the new team is told not to touch the code in case the whole site goes down. However, the legacy code makes it increasingly harder to update the website and so the downward spiral continues.

Even when workarounds are put in place, parts of the website may not function properly or run slowly and require frequent restarts. All this impacts on the loading speed, security and reliability of the site. The website may even be no longer supported by certain browsers or is flagged up as insecure in Google Chrome due to the old HTML framework.  

If any of the above sounds familiar, it is time to redevelop your website before it becomes too fragile and complex to function properly. 

 

The website is not built with responsive design

Responsive design means a website that is designed to adapt fluidly to whatever device it is displayed on. This does not mean that it simply shrinks to fit the screen as most browsers will do this automatically. Rather, it means that the website is coded to seamlessly adapt to provide the optimal browsing experience on almost any device.

A website with a fixed screen size looks visually outdated, and will affect the site’s search engine rankings as Google now practises mobile-first indexing. This means that the mobile version of a site’s content is the default for indexing and ranking and it is recommended that responsive design is used as best practice.

This doesn’t mean that the content needs to be different between the desktop and mobile versions of the site; in fact, to ensure the best rankings, it should be the same, particularly when it comes to keywords. 

 

The web pages are slow to load

Slow loading pages, even with a delay of more than two or three seconds, can cause a visitor to click away from the site and go to a competitor site. There are several reasons that may be causing a site to load slowly, including a poor quality server, or heavy web traffic. In this case switching to a better web hosting service will help.

The problem may lie with the way the site is built or designed, such as a lot of dated Flash files or too many Javascript files. It may also be overloaded with large image files or too many ads. The more streamlined and dynamic the code, the faster the pages will load. 

If the site is running on a content management system (CMS) such as WordPress or Magento, make sure that all the latest software updates have been installed. There may be plugins available that allow you to optimise page loading speeds, so it’s definitely worth investing in these.

 

No one is quite sure if all the necessary security measures are in place

If your website has custom-built code, but the development was outsourced or the original IT team have long since moved on, you may not be able to adequately check if all the required safety and security measures are in place. This can potentially lead to very serious issues including the hacking of customer data.

Cybersecurity breaches have increased threefold over the last five years, and since the pandemic they have become even more commonplace. Ransomware attacks, where a user inadvertently infects a website with a malicious file that locks or encrypts vital data and demands payment to release it, can ruin a business financially and destroy customer trust. 

Even when the data breach is containable, it can still be the thin end of the wedge and is a sure sign that the website development and security needs an overhaul. Even websites that are one year old can have outdated security in today’s fast moving technological environment, and hackers are becoming more sophisticated all the time.

 

The design or branding of your website is dated

The website is now often the first point of contact a potential customer will have with a business, so it is important to keep the design fresh and relevant to your core audience. If the company has been rebranded recently but the website hasn’t been updated to reflect the changes, then this creates inconsistency that will dilute brand recognition and familiarity.

Similarly, if your site was designed several years ago and has never been refreshed, then chances are it now stacks up unfavourably against your competitors and isn’t appealing to your target audience. Web design trends come and go, but it’s about more than just fashion.

Web users are now no longer prepared to put up with poorly designed sites that don’t display well on mobile devices, or make them work too hard to read the text or use the navigation menus. Overly minimal designs that were the height of cool a few years ago are now regarded as non-user friendly and are best avoided, for example. 

 

The website has poor accessibility features

All websites should be user friendly and inclusive for customers with visual or mobility impairments. Failure to provide accessible features will affect SEO and limit the reach of the website.

 

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