Out of Date: How Old, Poorly Designed Websites Hurt Your Business

You have an online presence, but it doesn't seem to be thriving, and the few customers who find your site don't spend a lot of time there.

Having an online presence is essential, but if your website is outdated or unattractive, it could be harming your business instead of helping it. 

But what are the characteristics of poorly designed websites? How do you know if you have one? Here's everything you need to know about outdated websites.

How Poorly Designed Websites Hurt Your Business

Your website is a reflection of your business, so ineffective website design may be perceived as negligence and a lack of care to your customers. How do they know you're keeping everything up-to-date and working on bettering your own business and what you can provide them if your design is outdated ? This will discourage them from visiting your site in favor of finding a more professional web page.

Search Engine Optimization

If your website is outdated, Google will punish you by not ranking your website as high in their search results. This keeps potential customers and readers from discovering your website and ultimately hurts your business.

Not Responsive

Responsive design ensures that websites render well on devices other than computers. People can access these websites from other mobile devices, and a responsive website will resize accordingly to fit the screen.

In 2018, 52.2 percent of internet traffic worldwide took place on mobile phones. Each year, this number increases. If your website doesn't look attractive on phones, you're potentially going to miss out on a lot of new customers.

Difficult to Navigate

If your visitors can't find what they're looking for in a few clicks, they are going to leave your site and find something better. It's imperative to have an organized website with a navigation bar that includes main pages and categories.

Unattractive

If your website has a font that is hard to read, pixelated images, or a color scheme that does not look appealing, you are going to lose visitors.

All your competition has to do to gain your customers is to organize themselves and add big banners across their pages and place infographics that advertise their name and services. These are simple things that you could do to improve your own site.

Too Simple

Website design is continuously evolving. What may have been trendy a few short years ago may no longer be acceptable in the world of web design today. 

Add-ons and small applications that allow your visitors to perform functions make websites more interactive and fun to use. If your site only has basic content and only a few pictures, you're missing out on opportunities to connect with your customers.

Consider adding social media feeds, high quality and well-constructed videos, and the option to sign up for email updates. This will keep your customers in the know while giving your site a modern look that visitors will love.

Fixing Bad Website Design

The whole point of having a website is to advertise your business and have a place where your customers can learn about your products. Poorly designed websites that suffer from any of the shortcomings, as mentioned above, need to be updated. You are potentially losing customers with these problems, and with the loss of visitors, potential profit may be lost.

If you want to update your website but don't know where to start, contact a professional to help you today.