In today's marketing climate, your company's website is one of the most prominent and valuable marketing resources available. When done properly, a website redesign can show quick and significant return on investment for a company making you look like a marketing rock star. Below we have 9 reasons to help you justify a website redesign to your boss:
1. Google Penalizes Sites That Are Not Mobile Friendly. This is costing you traffic
If you are like many of our B2B clients, as much as 30% of the traffic to your site comes from mobile devices. On April 21st, 2015 Google begin to reduce search rankings for sites that are not "mobile-friendly." This update could already be having significant impact on your traffic as Google is giving priority to sites that are "mobile friendly" in their search results. In order to restore your mobile traffic, it is important to certify your website passes Google's Mobile Friendly test. If your site is not currently mobile friendly, it is time to think about a redesign. If you want to read more about the "Mobilegeddon" update, please visit: https://www.foremostmedia.com/resources/blog/posts/google-penalizes-sites-that-are-not-mobile-friendly.
2. Bounce Rate Reduction- Our typical redesigns offer a 3-10% reduction in bounce rate
Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors to a particular website who navigate away from the site after viewing only one page. High bounce rates negatively affect your search rankings and hurt your conversion numbers (decrease the number of requests for quote, etc.) We have proven successes in lowering the bounce rate on site redesign projects by focusing on what users are looking for when they come to your site. We analyze the existing analytics and then structure the redesigned site to engage more visitors with the ultimate goal of more requests for quotes.
3. Better Calls to Action
Even a small increase in RFQs due to better placement and design can add up to big dollars in increased revenue. If your site's current Request for Quote buttons seem like an afterthought rather than the focus of the site, it is time to consider a redesign. A popular and perhaps overused phrase in the sales world is "ABC -always be closing." The premise behind this phrase is that a good sales person is constantly working to overcome objections, move the agenda (or sale) forward and close the deal quickly. A good website should do just that.
Build every page on your website with a purpose and have an obvious call to action or next step. For example, do you want them to watch a video on your product? Put that video front and center on the page. You might even consider having that video auto play when the page loads. At the end of that video, prominently insert another call to action that moves them to the next step of the sales cycle, such as a request for quote or a link to your testimonials page. When designing your new site, try to put yourself in the position of that visitor that is not as familiar with every aspect of your business like you are. Your site should be designed in such a way that visitors know within the first few seconds of visiting exactly what you want them to do next, and also directs them through the entire sales process to accomplish your end goal.
4. Increase Conversion Rates - More RFQs = More Sales
We built an effective calculator, https://www.foremostmedia.com/services/online-marketing/conversion-rate-optimization, to help track and calculate what a small increase in conversion rates translates to in terms of sales. With a site redesign, we typically see improvement in site traffic, which translates to improvement in site engagement and then adds to the number of RFQs received
5. Most Foremost Media Clients That Add an SEO Program Typically See Year over Year Organic Traffic Growth of 76.5%
If you have not focused your efforts on Search Engine Optimization, a site redesign is the perfect time to implement a SEO program. We recently did an internal audit on all of the companies we work with that have ongoing SEO programs. We found that companies engaging in SEO on an ongoing basis see an organic traffic increase average of 76.5% year over year, making SEO one of the most cost effective ways to grow your business.
6. Incorporate Rebranding Into Your Website
If your company is undergoing a rebranding, you will most certainly need to redesign your website (along with your other marketing materials). In the past, rebranding efforts often started with print pieces, however, in the last few years we have seen many savvy companies start their rebranding efforts with their website and other digital properties. Do not forget to apply your fresh new digital look to your social properties. LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube all allow you to give your company pages a bit of brand flavor in their templates.
7. Your Competitors Have Redesigned Their Sites
Money and budget do not always allow you to give your site a makeover every time one of your competitors redesign their sites, but if your competitors have made changes that improve their rankings and end up pushing you down in the search results, it may be time to look at a site redesign. Spend some time looking at your competitor's site. You can get some ideas on what changed by comparing their current site with past versions of their site at https://archive.org/web/. Look at their menu structure and how their site organization to help you formulate your plan for your site's redesign.
8. New Sites Are Often Easier To Update
Content management systems continue to improve year over year. If you have not updated your site in several years, you will find that the new site allows your marketing department and even HR much more control over the content. In turn, this saves you time and money because you do not need IT resources to make updates. Foremost Media has many great tools designed to help the busy marketing manager update and maintain complex databases such as dealer locators that typically require a database expert to make changes. These tools allow marketing to make changes to key pieces of your website on the fly without the help of IT. Most new content management systems also have revision control and the segmentation of content to allow multiple users to update content based on permissions.
9. Build out "Solutions Pages," Not Just Product Listings
Many of your target prospects may not know that they are in the market for a "Ultrasonic 200X Welder," but rather have been delegated the task of finding a solution to join two pieces of HDPE. Consider building industry solutions pages as opposed to just product listings by product name. During a site redesign, you should take the opportunity to think about how end users might search for your product if they do not know your specific product name. Build pages to help those end users understand your product's capabilities. In addition, try focusing your content to help your industrial manufacturing company show up in searches on Google for searches such as, "Joining two pieces of HDPE for Marine equipment."