When to plan for your website revamp and how?

The only constant in the world is "CHANGE". Though this line has become a cliche, it is very important to implement the same in our businesses. And of course, the change needs to be planned well considering all the right and critical factors.

An interesting case study in this regard is the one of Nokia where it had made a strategic mistake by not accepting the offer from "Android" to select and implement the same as its operating system. The mobile phone industry which was once dominated by Nokia paved way for lesser-known brands like Xiaomi, Oppo, etc to penetrate with new features and better UX which the Android OS offered. Here Technological Enhancements won the battle against Brand Value, Trust, and Longevity. But more importantly, change won the battle against resistance for change. 

So it's a thumb rule for business success - accept the change and remodel your business process a step ahead to match this Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous (VUCA) world.

Among all other industries, the IT industry has experienced the most continuous and rapid changes ranging from development techniques, functionalities, UI/UX patterns, and SEO techniques.

As the internet has become the modern-day marketing battleground, the importance of your website as your most potent weapon has increased exponentially. From a mare online brochure, your website now has to become your key marketing bot. A well-built website has the power to talk on your behalf, establish trust and most importantly generate business for your organization.

Question yourself now. "Is my website acting as a revenue-generating resource?"

If your answer is YES, I will ask you to consider the last time you revamp the website. If it's more than 2 years, I will suggest you go for a change. your end-users/customers are starting to have a better experience elsewhere within the same domain so you need to rise up to the occasion and come up with a state-of-the-art UX which makes them wanna stay and come back to your website.  

If your answer is NO. I will ask you to go for a revamp immediately with features that help you to convert a website visitor into a lead.

I know your next questions will be:

• When should I make out "it's time to go for a change"?
• Key parameters I must incorporate to make a website that will serve me for at least 2 years as a business generating tool.

Go through the below checkpoints to understand that your website demands a makeover:

1. Analyse your website's bounce rate. The bounce rate is a measure of a single page visit where the audience leaves the website without interaction. The rate though depends on specific industry and products (high research & low research), however, as per Google a bounce rate in the range of:

   Bounce rate	Inference
   26 - 40%	Excellent
   41 - 55%	Average
   56 - 65%	Consider a change in marketing strategy and some key parameters in the landing page such as Load-time,  Call To Action button positioning and also the website content
   Above 65%	Consider an immediate website revamp

2. Analyse your Lead Count. As I have mentioned earlier, your website should act as a business enquiry generator, find out the number of leads you are generating. Create a graph for each month calculating the number of website visitors from target regions to the amount of lead. Check if the ratio is constant or is fluctuating. From this, you will understand if your website traffic is turning to be prospects or not. 

3. Competitor Analysis with respect to UX and Functionalities. Analyse websites of your top 3 competitors. Check the functionalities of their website. Suppose one of your competitors is offering a free "Audit Report" functionality in their website which an audience can avail by sharing their contact information. Whereas another has kept a video testimonial of its client to garner more trust or is displaying some certificates.You should be smart enough to implement these if not some more strategies that I will discuss soon below.

4. Always make sure that your website is updated technologically. Suppose your website is developed in Drupal 7 and currently in June 2020 Drupal 9 is about to be released. For sure you will miss out on several features of the upgraded CMS will offer. In this type of scenario, you should always consider a technological upgrade.

Now once you make up your mind to go for a website revamp, let me walk you through some key points you should consider while guiding your team or the website development agency you have selected.

1. Display your Contact Information in the right places. You know that there are few patterns of eye-ball movement on websites. In normal websites, there is generally a Z pattern whereas in eCommerce websites there is an E pattern eyeball movement. Generally, an audience will only contact you once s/he goes through the entire content and gets convinced to give you a call. However, you are not as lucky as Professor-X to get into each of your customer's mind and understand the exact point they look-up to call you. So my suggestion is to put the "Contact Information" sticky to page scroll. Moreover, highlight mobile numbers, WhatsApp icon, and eMail addresses as contact information.
2. Always use Call To Actions at major interaction points. Your website should always be interactive. You must always talk with the audience and pursue them to play with the website. Moreover, use multiple call to action buttons for Contact Us page visit, such as "Enquire with Us", "Request for a Quote", "Get a Free Consultation" etc.
3. Give special attention to the "Contact Us" page. You should give proper and detailed addresses along with all available modes of Contact details such as Skype, WhatsApp, Mobile, and Landline. Put a Google Map as well. 
4. You can use a Chat-bot for 24X7 client support. You may sleep but your website must not. As you don't know when your client may enquire about your products or services, implement chatbots to answer on your behalf.
5. Make sure that the User Experience of your website compels your clients. Question yourself putting yourself in your client's shoes. Most of your clients landed upon your website looking for a solution. Answer those with information and proven facts. Make use of wise color combinations and formulas. Make sure that your website's UX is highly optimized for mobile devices as most of your website's visitors will be from mobile devices in the future if not now. Thereby always instruct your web developer to make the site responsive, use eye-soothing fronts and possible thumb zones. 
6. Let them Trust You and Highlight "Why You?". Your clients will purchase your products or take your services only when they tend to believe in your organization. To increase the trust metrics use testimonials in the form of videos and display the certificates your organization holds and the awards it received.
7. Out of Sight is Out of Mind. Once your website is developed, your prime task would be attracting your target group to this new internet showroom and the way to get more website footfalls you will have to rank the website in search engines. Hence SEO parameters would be implemented with high importance.
8. Your customer will never knock on your door and wait. Hence give maximum priority to ensure that your website loads faster. You should always try to keep a benchmark of 1.5 seconds as load time. 

I think so for what we have discussed has provided you an important insight that will help you to make a decision, monitor the work and let your website contribute to your business. Still, if you have any queries or knowledge thrust, contact us for a free consultation.