5 Reasons Your Organization Needs a New Website

You may have seen ads for Squarespace, or received an e-mail from an agency telling you just how great their web design prices are, which will probably leave you with one key question: do I really need a new website?

Your organization may have a website that you're utterly satisfied with, or with one some minor grievances. Ultimately, though, the need for a website depends on many different factors ranging from performance to available resources.

Here are five key reasons why you or your organization should consider revamping your presence on the web. These are especially crucial in the age of COVID-19, when your appearance on the internet is just as important (if not more) than any other aspect of your business.

1. Your Website Hasn't Been Updated in a Few Years

This may be the most obvious and well known reason to refresh your website. We’re not suggesting you should create a new site just because it's a few years old. However, if your website hasn't been updated in a few years, chances are it's not going to meet many of the standards of today's web landscape. This is because the needs and expectations of both users and search engines are constantly evolving, and if your site fails to meet those expectations, you'll find yourself falling behind your competition.

2. Your Website Doesn't Perform on Mobile Devices

By 2021, Google will be switching to Mobile First Indexing for all websites. In other words, all websites will be ranked based on how well they perform on mobile. As mentioned in the first point, this means that your site needs to be up to speed (literally) to meet the ever changing requirements of search engines.

Beyond the needs of a search engine, however, are the needs of your users. A majority of users nowadays access the web from a mobile device, and if your website is frustrating to use, potential customers are more likely to leave and look for a solution elsewhere.

3. Your Website is Slow

This is another common reason to update a website, and site speed can be brought down by many different factors. A slow website isn't just one that takes minutes to load. On the web, even a second can be the difference between losing or gaining a customer.

For this reason, website speed is one of the most important factors for the performance of your website. To a user, a slow website is cumbersome. In an era of instant gratification, a slow site often means you will lose potential customers who would rather go to a faster competing website. To a search engine (i.e. Google) a slow site is one that is frustrating and not valuable to their users, which will cause your site to drop in rankings.

Site speed can be affected by many different elements of your website, but some major ones are:

• The platform your site is built on (Wordpress, Squarespace, WIX, Webflow, etc.)
  Without getting too technical, the platform your website is built on can have a significant impact on the speed of your website. Different platforms use different, often inefficient methods to help you or your web designer built sites without needing to develop and code the site from the ground up.‍
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• How well optimized your site is
  ‍Your site may be designed in a less than optimal way — you may have all your explainer videos on your home page, along with your blog posts, and more. The way your site is laid out is going to play a major role in how fast it loads and reacts. Many sites are also bursting at the seams with unnecessary plugins and code that could easily be removed to speed up your site.
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• How well optimized your content is
  ‍Large images, large videos, and massive files could be slowing down your website significantly. You website most likely doesn't need a high-resolution image for each of your blog posts, and even compressing your files by a little bit could speed your site up by a serious margin.