Website Too Old? Here’s Why You Need to Update It

Anyone can agree that the best and most cost-efficient way to promote your business is on the web. This is why it is necessary for any business owner, big or small, to put up a website. However, it’s not enough that you have one. If you leave it as it is for a long time, people will start thinking you’ve abandoned your ship.

Your website represents your business and therefore says a lot about it. This is why many companies invest in web design and development for purposes of marketing, aesthetics, and usability.

Everybody loves a new look

Everyone wants to change their looks once in a while. You probably change your home’s interior design, maybe change the paint, rearrange furniture. You probably change your hairstyle every few months. Why not? You get used to your look, and then you just want to surprise people with something new. It makes you interesting and attractive.

The same things are true for your website. Many websites change their themes and layout every few years because the old look gets rusty old at some point. Visitors get bored. They’ll be left wondering what’s up with the website owner.

Websites should adapt to changes in the way people view them

Google rolled in its mobile-friendly update two years ago as a response to the rising number of people accessing the web on mobile handsets. That means not keeping your mobile market in mind is a terrible oversight. When your website doesn’t have a mobile version, visitors who are accessing your web pages from their smartphones will have a difficult time reading your content and navigating through your site. These issues cause enough frustration in many users to force them to leave your page.

Your website should be compatible with commonly used browsers

Now this gets tricky because browsers update themselves. That means your website’s coding may become outdated at some point. When your website doesn’t meet even basic web standards, it starts to look somewhat an outlier. Your visitors won’t see the programming language deficiency, but they’ll certainly notice your site looking odd. This is a problem with old websites that are no longer maintained. They look old and abandoned. Worse, they have a clutter of HTML code that’s slowing down loading speeds.

You need new calls to action

If your website is old, chances are it lacks appropriate calls to action. Maybe it doesn’t have one. Maybe its CTA leads them to an expired or missing page. Maybe the CTA is already outdated.

If you have a compelling message, a call to action is the only thing you need to convert casual readers to subscribers or subscribers to customers. But an outdated call to action is just as bad as a missing one. This is an issue when you have a huge website. Thus, you have to do regular checks on your pages. Make sure the calls to action are updated and they lead to updated pages as well.

Your website doesn’t have new features

It’s not just about having new features for the sake of having them. It’s about adjusting to how people are browsing nowadays. More importantly, it’s about using tools that improve the way you track the health and performance of your website. Conversion tracking and heat mapping, for instance, measure the effectiveness of your campaigns, allowing you to see which pages convert visitors to customers and which ones receive the most traffic. However, many of the tools are only usable in an updated website.

You need fresh content

 

One of the telltale signs of an old website is old content. When was the last time you updated your homepage or landing page content? A common mistake companies make is while they constantly update their social media pages, they leave their websites alone. Your website is not supposed to be static. It’s supposed to be an active hub of information about your business.

Old content per se is not the issue. You can have universal, timeless content that remains relevant and true regardless of the fad or trend. However, there are areas of your website that need fresh content every now and then.

You have obsolete content

 

Products and services come and go. When your company evolves, some of the stuff you initially introduced may no longer be in production. Thus, it makes sense to take pages about them down to avoid misleading visitors. At the same time, as knowledge in our specific industries also evolve, old knowledge becomes superseded by scientific breakthroughs, effectively rendering the former archaic. You may keep them for purposes of comparison between old and new information, but inform your visitors the latter exists.

Google changes algorithms

Google may change its algorithm without prior notice. Websites will have to adjust once the algorithm updates take effect and start affecting SERPs and PageRank. Webmasters, SEOs, and even marketers are on the lookout for such changes, monitoring the ranking of their websites and inbound traffic volumes from time to time. Shifts in ranking and traffic volume can be due to a number of things, including algorithm changes that negatively impact one’s site. In that case, it’s imperative to update the site to adapt.