Monday, March 30, 2015

Website Maintenance: When to Overhaul

In today’s age, the web portal is usually the most comprehensive promotional material that a consumer encounters. For this reason, companies should ensure rigorous and regular website maintenance.

The website may need a tweaking here and there, from time to time. But when is a major overhaul necessary? Check out the list below:

No one visits anymore! This would rank as the most important reason to re-do your website altogether. You should be worried if traffic has drastically diminished, as it raises serious flags about its overall usability and visual appeal. Perhaps the template it was based on looks very crowded. Or the content is no longer interesting.

Features are no longer being used. Features vary from company to company. Perhaps there’s a video that flashes to welcome each new page visitor. Or a button of social media platforms that users can click to share. Or boxes that elicit data. When the website becomes defined by these unused features, maybe you need a redesign.

Security has been compromised. Does your website also serve as a selling platform for your company? And was it hacked? Your customer’s information stored on the servers might have been compromised. You do not want any lawsuits arising from a customer’s credit card info being leaked. Discuss with a web development the damage, and whether it is actually safe to simply migrate anything from it to a new site.

It takes a long time to load. Today’s web users have a very narrow attention span. If your pages don’t load immediately – perhaps because there is too much information on it – perhaps the visitor may not even be able to digest all of it. Worse, they will leave the page and look for another provider of the products and services they are looking for. This is especially important if they are checking the website using their smartphones. Web content should then be short enough for them to be reader-friendly whichever device they are being viewed from.

The company is re-branding. A website is a major branding tool. So if the company is planning to re-brand, its web portal should follow. Does it want to adopt a minimalist look? Or cater to a younger market, perhaps? Or enter Asia? All these should reflect in the new design as well as the content.

For your web portal’s optimum performance and contribution towards your marketing goals, enlist the services of a website maintenance company. Talk to your website redesign/overhaul ideas, and let them walk you through it.

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