Digital Marketing is all about results: whether you’re selling products or services, you need to be able to track how well your campaigns are doing and determine what’s working and what’s not. Fortunately, there are plenty of ways to track your digital marketing results. Some methods are more sophisticated than others, but all of them can help you understand how your campaigns and your website are performing.
The first step is to identify your goals and objectives. If your website is not generating leads for your brick and mortar small business, but you feel that it could be, it may be time to redesign it.
A common way to track marketing results is to use a reporting tool such as Google Analytics or more intricate systems that integrate with a CRM(Customer Relationship Management Software.) You can spend a lot of time and money on your website, but if you don’t know what’s working, it’s not worth the effort.
The Visual Style appears dated and lacks the visual appeal of the competitors.
If the visual style of your site appears dated, not just to you, but to people in your target audience, then it may be time to redesign. If your direct competitors are also significantly ahead in terms of visual appeal then you may want to consider freshening up the way it looks.
How often is too often? It really depends on the designer and the archetypes that were used to begin with. When the archetypes of design are more conservative and safe, the design is going to last longer, but also lack a dynamism. On the other hand, if your design uses very progressive archetypes it will fresh and vibrant on day one, but more quickly it will become outdated.
Normally you can expect a corporate website to last between 5 and 7 years without an urgent need for a redesign, obviously it also depends on the nature of the industry and the aggressiveness of the competitors. A website that has no real competitors can redesign on the fly and progressively improve, rather than a complete refresh. On the other hand, if you are in a crowded industry with significant direct competition, you may benefit from more upbeat redesign to keep reminding your audience that you are ahead.
The competitive landscape has changed
Sometimes, it becomes necessary to redesign a website when the competitive landscape has changed. For example, if a competitor is really gaining market because of a new way of serving the market. Or if a potential industry threat has finally materialized. For example when Space-X finally was able to make rockets that could be re-used, that in itself changed the entire industry of space exploration. You can’t compete with the cost savings of that new technology. Therefore a re-thinking of the business has to be made, and with that the communication of the new strategy is necessary. In that, you change the website to fit the new communication.
The web technology has changed
The web clearly has some components that are ever green. However, even after a short six months, new digital media techniques change and evolve and new ways become the standard very quickly. Do you know that Internet Explorer will no longer be supported by Microsoft in 2022? The web keeps changing and evolving and it is necessary to somewhat keep up. If you designed your last website at least 8 years ago, you may not have a fully responsive website. Only eight years ago, the visitation to websites from phones was not so prevalent. Today, mobile usage of the web is much higher than desktop usage.
A major change in how your target audience behaves
Two years ago, news outlets where talking about a potential virus from a place called Wuhan, China. Fast-forward two years, millions of lives lost, billions of lives changed, trillions of dollars spent and we have now a different world altogether. People are simply not the same. So your target audience doesn’t behave the same. The needs and preferences of your audience have evolved. For example, if you are a restaurant owner, now take out is much more important that before, therefore online ordering is also much more important. If you haven’t thought much about how your website supports your business in the new post-pandemic economic climate, then probably is a good time to think about it.
If you are thinking about a website redesign for your business and want to talk about the specifics of how to make that a success, contact Merkados today.
