5 Signs Your Website is Outdated

As a business owner, it is essential to stay up-to-date on the latest website design trends to ensure you are providing the best experience for your customers. A website that looks outdated can be a major deterrent for potential customers, so it is important to be aware of the signs that your website design is past its prime. Let’s dive into some key signs your website is outdated and how to fix it.

1. Old Web Design & Graphics
2. Lack of Responsiveness
3. Use of Flash Animation
4. Irrelevant Content
5. Lack of Calls to Action

Old Web Designs & Graphics

Your website’s design and imagery plays a crucial role in creating a lasting impression on your visitors. If your website has outdated imagery, or doesn’t match current branding, it can be confusing to new customers and cause them to look elsewhere which leads to a high bounce rate and low conversions.

To ensure that all old designs are replaced with new ones, consider working with a professional web designer or web design agency. They can help you create a fresh and modern design that aligns with your business goals and audience preferences. To stay consistent with your brand’s image, it’s important to ensure that all elements of your website’s design are consistent with your brand guidelines. This includes color scheme, typography, and imagery. Consistency is key to building a strong and memorable brand image that resonates with your audience.

Poor User Experience

If your website is difficult to navigate or confusing, you can bet that users won’t stick around for long. To improve your user experience, it’s important to put yourself in the shoes of your target audience. Consider what they’re looking for and how they might want to find it. Make sure that your website is organized logically and that your menu is easy to use. Also, ensure that your pages load quickly and that there are no dead links or error messages.

It’s important to remember that more and more people are accessing the internet from mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. As such, it’s essential to make sure that your website is mobile-friendly. If your site isn’t optimized for mobile, you may lose visitors who can’t navigate or read your site on their device. Ensure that your pages load quickly and that all images and text are optimized for smaller screens.

Use of Flash Animation

The use of Flash animation is one of the biggest indicators that your website design is outdated. While it was popular back in the early 2000s, it has since become an obsolete technology that can actually hurt your website in a number of ways.

Firstly, it can be incredibly slow to load and can put off users who want a quick and easy browsing experience. Additionally, not all devices support Flash animation, meaning that some users may not even be able to see your website as it was intended. It is also not SEO friendly as search engines are not able to crawl and index the content of a Flash file, meaning that it will negatively impact your search rankings.

Irrelevant Content

When was the last time you reviewed the content on your website? If it’s been a while, it’s time to take a closer look. Your website should accurately reflect your business, its values, and its offerings. Outdated or irrelevant content can send the wrong message to potential customers and attract the wrong leads.

Make sure you regularly review the content on your website and remove anything that is no longer relevant. Your website should accurately represent your business and its offerings to attract the right audience.

Lack of Calls to Action

Another sign that your website may be in need of a design makeover is the lack of calls to action. Without these calls to action, such as filling out a form or calling your business, your visitors may not know what they’re supposed to do on your site.

Common locations for calls to action include:

• Above the fold: This is the area of your website that’s visible without scrolling down. Including a call to action in this area can be highly effective, as visitors are more likely to see it.
• In the sidebar: Sidebars can be a great location for a call to action, such as a button to subscribe to your newsletter.
• At the end of blog posts: If you have a blog, consider adding a call to action at the end of each post to encourage readers to take action.

As for how many calls to action you should have on your website, there’s no hard and fast rule. However, having too many can be overwhelming and confusing for your visitors. Instead, focus on having one or two calls to action that are highly visible and relevant to your audience.

Let the Experts at JLB Refresh Your Website

At JLB, our team has designed award-winning websites for companies in Nashville, Brentwood, and Franklin, as well as surrounding cities in Middle Tennessee and beyond! Plus, our highly successful digital marketing team leverages proven strategies for websites, search engines, social media, email, and Google ads that produce highly qualified leads and market your brand.