IT'S TIME TO REDESIGN YOUR WEBSITE
Designing your first website can be stressful. It requires you to really explore the the core of you business in order to write the copy. You work with a designer and go through the process of creating a site that looks unique and explains your business. You end up investing a lot of time, energy and money. After all that, you're finished and it's time for the site to go live.
By the time the process is finished, many entrepreneurs are very glad that it's over - and don't want to do it again anytime soon, however, websites need to be maintained to stay current with your business plan and market trends. Some of these changes can be accomplished with simple updates to your site. But there's only so far that patching and revising your current site can go. If your site is particularly outdated, or if it's not working well for you, it's probably time to consider a full-scale site redesign. Here are some tips to know when you should consider redesign:

Your Business Has Changed or Grown

If your business is no longer the same as it was when you designed your site, chances are that you should redesign your website to reflect that. If you've only had a few small changes, you might be able to just update your current website. But, if you've changed your business direction, decided to provide new products or services, or if your company has grown significantly, it will pay off to redesign your site. Reconsider how the changes to your business should be reflected or addressed in the structure, design and strategy behind your website.

Your Site is so 90's

Some signs of an outdated web site include: slow-loading graphics, old-style "framed" coding, where the site is divided up into panes that load separately, little animated cartoon clip-art throughout the site, and text created as images instead of in HTML. Having any of these on your site make you look 'behind the times'. It can also make you look like you don't care enough about your business or about technological advances to keep abreast of them. Keeping your company's website looking modern will improve its credibility.

The Site Isn't User-Friendly

If you regularly get questions on your site from visitors, if they ask questions or are confused about your services, re-structuring your copy or rewriting it can help to fix these problems. If you've been adding to your site over time and the navigation has become confusing, restructuring your navigation could be another pressing reason to redesign your site. You want visitors to be able to easily find their way around your site and to be able to access all the information you have within a few clicks. Laying out your site to make that possible can make your visitor's experience on your site a lot easier.

You Apologize for the Site When Referencing It or Handing Out Your Business Cards

Your site should be a source of pride. It should provide your clients and prospects an easy way to get a lot of information about your business. And, if you have to apologize for out-of-date information, broken images, poor design, difficult navigation or anything else on your site, it makes you look unprepared and unprofessional. Make sure your site is in top shape and looks impressive, so your clients believe your business is in good shape too.

You're Not Getting Ranked Well in the Search Engines

Poor rankings in the Search Engines can be a result of bad design choices or coding on your site. Make sure that your site isn't designed using frames and that the text is coded in HTML. Flash sites are also more difficult to optimize for search engines. Ask a professional web designer to take a quick look at your site; he or she should be able to tell you right away if there's room for improvement. Why not be on page 1 of Google?

It's Not Bringing in inquiries and Helping You to Make Sales

A website can do a lot more than just impersonate your brochure - it can help you close sales, bring in new prospects and make your business easier to run. To bring in more inquiries and make more sales include the following when you redesign your site:

• Calls to action to encourage your visitors to take specific actions - like purchasing something, contacting you, or signing up for a newsletter.
• Forms, scripts, or programs to make your work flow more efficient - like contact forms, project estimating tools, e newsletters, etc. These can help you keep in touch with your clients and prospects. You may be ready to include a shopping cart or PayPal on your site can also help you to make more sales without any additional work.

Downloadable information packets, articles, questionnaires and white papers can answer a prospect's questions about your products or services and help them to move closer to buying. And, if you require the prospect to enter their email address or other contact information, it can help you to grow your prospect líst as well. These are just a few of the functions that your site can perform for your business. To get ideas for other ways that your site can help you improve your business, look at the other sites that you visit and note the functions they perform.

Your Site is Costing Alot to Update

If you're paying alot for maintenance because of changes and still have a lot to go, it might be time to consider a whole site redesign. Make a líst of everything that you want to do on your site and consult a web designer about redesigning your site with those changes in mind. Often, if you have extensive changes to make to your site, it can be less expensive to just start over.

If your site is designed in Flash or coded in such a way that you can't maintain it yourself, redesigning and re-coding your site could allow you to do so. Having the ability to make changes and update your own text will let you make revisions quickly, at no expense. And you can play with your site and make revisions to see what will work best for your business and clients.