Is it time to redo your website?

- [Instructor] Is it time to redo your website? Embarking in a website redesign process isn't an easy or quick journey, so your first step should be to make sure you do actually need to redesign your website. When we work with new clients, one of the first things we look at is their website. And while over the years we've seen some totally irredeemable websites that couldn't be fixed and required to do-over, sometimes the fixes can be done without going through the redesign process. It's actually a quicker process to eliminate the reasons why you should redesign instead of the reasons why you shouldn't. So I'll go through those now. First, let's take a look at your content management system, your CMS. Site builders like Squarespace and Wix can be great for small businesses, especially those just starting out. But as you grow and need to expand, you might outgrow what these platforms can do for you. That's when it's likely time to move to a CMS based website. For example, WordPress or Shopify if you have an e-commerce business. We've moved clients from Squarespace and Wix to WordPress when they have an advanced need for search engine optimization, also called SEO, and there's only so much you can customize with these site builders. Additionally, if you have a lot of content, it can get unwieldy over time to manage, especially since these site builders typically aren't built for websites with hundreds or thousands of pages. You may also be in an older CMS that is no longer actively supported by the original developers, or you're on a completely custom CMS that was developed by your website design company. In these cases, you'll want to move to another CMS for security reasons. Older unsupported versions or totally custom CMSs will eventually be exploited by hackers resulting in your website being hacked. Similarly, you may have a website on WordPress, but with a theme you purchased or downloaded from a WordPress theme marketplace. Themes sometimes need updates just like the core components of WordPress itself and if the developer of the theme has abandoned it, you will likely need to find another theme. While some CMSs such as WordPress do allow you to easily switch themes, there may be significant layout or formatting issues to be addressed and that's a good time to reevaluate your site and make sure that it's still helping you achieve your goals. Now that we've looked at your CMS, the so-called backend parts of your website, let's look at your website itself, the front end. Some questions to ask yourself here are, does the current website architecture align with your current business goals? For example, do the top level navigation options and the folder structure actually align with what you need your website to do for you? If it doesn't, would it be very difficult to change it or do you need to take a step back and do a total rethink of your content? Next, is your website very slow to load? Have you check that? If you haven't, try using Google's PageSpeed Insights tool. Use this free test on a few key pages on your website. If you're seeing scores below 60 on mobile or desktop, it may take so much work to fix up your website design to correct these problems. That is just as much effort to redo the website. Here's an example of a PageSpeed Insight score for a website that just has a few problems which can likely be easily fixed with a mobile score of 68. And here's a website that unfortunately needs a total redo with a mobile score of 25. To learn more about site speed issues in Google, I recommend checking out my video on LinkedIn Learning on Google's core web vital scores. Finally, some last questions to ask yourself. Is your website accessible? Some jurisdictions now require websites to have a certain level of accessibility following the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines or WCAG. Can you make content changes yourself or do you need to ask a developer every time? That's an expensive barrier that you can likely fix with a website redesign. Perhaps your business is rebranding and has significantly changed their audience as a result. Then it's time to rethink if your website will still work for that new audience or not. Is your website outdated looking? That can leave your visitors with a poor impression of your business organization. And finally, is your website mobile responsive or do you have a desktop only experience? If so, then it's definitely time to start that website redesign project. This list should help you decide if it really is time to redo your website or if you only need to do some minor renovations.