Website design is continuously evolving at a rapid pace. Look at websites designed recently versus those from a few years ago, and you will notice many differences. Websites of today are built with minimalism, clean lines, easy navigation, larger fonts, and a simpler colour palette, all in an attempt to provide a better user experience. Before the smartphone was introduced, optimizing your website for mobile was a low priority. Today, a massive percentage of site visits are coming from mobile. We've seen these numbers first hand in the Google Analytics data we collect on sites we've built. This means a site of today needs to be designed with a mobile-first approach.
Google rewards sites that frequently update their content. If you're serious about working towards ranking your website on the first page of Google, you need to have a plan in place to update your site on a regular basis. Google's goal is to deliver, as they say, "…useful and relevant results in a fraction of a second." For your content to have any SEO value at all, it needs to be beneficial to searchers.
Paul Boag, a well-known user experience designer, what he calls the "Boom/bust cycle" in one of his blog posts.
Most company websites exist in a constant boom/bust cycle, with periodic redesigns every few years. Unfortunately, there are two problems with that approach. First, each redesign usually consists of entirely throwing out the old site and starting from scratch. The only reason this happens is that the site has been neglected for so long…. If the site is continually evolved, this is not necessary. The second problem is that the website is only really at its peak performance when it has just been redesigned. The design begins to look dated, the technology becomes superseded by what the competition are doing, and the content fails to update as the organization changes. Before long, it is an embarrassment and so is more of a hindrance than a help.
We set up all of our clients with an Analytics dashboard. With this kind of data, we can leverage it to make rational decisions for improving our websites. First, it's critical to establish your goals. To make informed choices, you'll need to have a clear focus on your goals so you can figure out how to accomplish them by setting objectives. Studying metrics like bounce rate, time on site, and behaviour flow can help you understand your audience and drive decisions about how to update your website.
