5 Ways to Refresh Your Website for 2021

If you’ve had your website for a few years or more, it might be a good time to refresh it. A website refresh could be making some updates to your existing content or design, adding new content or redesigning your website entirely.

But how do you know when is a good time to redesign your website and how do you refresh your website? In this article, we’ll answer those questions so that you have plenty of time to refresh your website for 2021.

Signs It Might Be Time For A Website Refresh

When it comes to website refresh or redesign, there are a few telltale signs to keep an eye out for. If you’ve noticed any of the following signs, then it’s definitely time to take action.

  • Low conversions — if people are visiting your site but not buying or signing up as much as you’d like them to, your website design might have a lot to do with it.
  • Poor page loading speed — nowadays, visitors expect your website to load in 2 seconds or less. On top of that, search engines favor fast loading websites. You can check your website speed with a tool like Pingdom
  • High bounce rate (visitors don’t browse site beyond home page) — your Google Analytics should tell you what’s your average bounce rate. For most websites, the bounce rate falls between 26 and 70%. If your website is higher than that, a website refresh could help you keep visitors on your site longer.
  • Low search engine rankings — showing up on the first page of Google is every website owner’s dream. After, that’s the best way to get organic traffic to your site. If your website is not showing for your desired keywords, it’s time to update your content strategy.
  • Unappealing website — like it or not, design matters. In fact, according to research, first impressions are 94% design related.
  • Security concerns — if you’re seeing a security warning when you try to visit your site or if your customers are seeing the insecure warning, your sales could plummet. Implementing an SSL certificate could help boost your sales and overall conversion rates.

5 Ways to Refresh Your Website for 2021

Now that we’ve covered the signs pointing you towards a website redesign, let’s go over 5 ways to refresh your website for 2021.

Tell a Story

One of the easiest ways to refresh your website is through storytelling. Storytelling helps brain focus, not to mention people love stories.

You can use a story to effectively take your audience on a journey and show them the transformation they’ll go through as a result of working with you. Your audience should be the hero of the story while your business or non-profit serves as a guide that helps them along on their journey.

If you need help coming up with an effective story, use the StoryBrand framework.

Reduce Stock Photography

Now more than ever, website visitors and customers want to interact with real people. According to research, images of real people improve confidence as well as conversions. As such, your website visitors and potential customers want to see the people behind the brand so it’s in your best interest to give them what they want.

Reduce the amount of stock photography and replace them with authentic, relevant, real photos. This increases the transparency and builds trust in your brand. You can show them your team members, include photos of your offices, and show them behind-the-scenes of how your products are made.

Use Minimal Design

Minimalistic design is trending in a huge way. You see it everywhere from Apple and Google phone and OS designs to home design and simple living.

Follow in the same footsteps and unclutter your website by getting rid of everything that doesn’t improve your bottom line. For example, you can make your copy easy to browse with headings, short paragraphs, and bullet points.

Reduce the number of blocks that someone has to view at once. Instead, make them into bigger sections, with plenty of space to breathe.

Lastly, get rid of the home page slider as various research shows that they are more distracting than beneficial for your conversion rate.

Add a Conversational Form

Conversational forms allow you to have a conversation with your website visitors as well as to capture their attention. You can learn more about the value of a conversational form and see it in action with the help of the Conversational Form open source project.

You can also use a live chat tool that makes it easy for people to message you while they’re on your site. You can use a tool like Drift for free.

Make Your Calls To Action Clear

One of the biggest problems with most websites is that they make their visitors guess what they should do. This leads to visitor frustration and they are more likely to leave rather than stick around and try to figure out where they should go next.

You can fix this by making your primary call to action easy to find. Add it to your main navigation, in your hero section, and throughout your website.

Place any secondary or transitional calls to action appropriately.

Making your calls to action clear and more visible could be as simple as changing some text links to buttons to make them more prominent or adding button in hero section and navigation

If you’re using a form to collect leads, make it specific to the leads you want. For example, don’t use Name, Email, Message, use something that your audience knows they are in the right place.

Look at this Let’s Build Together form on Oak Hill Building:

It’s short but helps the audience know they are in the right place and provides valuable information to Oak Hill.

Benefits to Refresh Your Website Design

There are several benefits to refreshing your website design. They include:

  • SEO boost — coming up with a solid content strategy for your business can be included as a part of your website refresh and will result in better rankings in search engines.
  • Fresh content — updating or changing the copy on your website pages will add fresh content to your site
  • Increase security — by reviewing your site’s security policies, implementing an SSL certificate, as well as a proper backup and monitoring solution will keep your website safe as well as your visitors’ information
  • Be proud of website — once your website has a new and improved design, you’ll be proud to share your website link everywhere
  • Improve website speed — by getting rid of unnecessary content and optimizing your website images, your website speed will improve
  • Mobile first design/responsiveness — your website will be optimized for mobile devices so visitors browsing on their phones and tablets will have an easy time using your website
  • Easy to navigate — by minimizing your navigation, your website visitors will be able to easily find information they want
  • Increase leads and conversions — lastly, all of the above benefits will increase your leads and conversions which will turn your website into a money making machine.

Need help refreshing your website for 2021?

If your site needs more than a new coat of paint, it might be time for a re-design. Contact us for help refreshing or re-designing your website today and request a free quote.

We focus on beautiful web design that delivers results for your organization. Our specialty is creating customized WordPress websites.

About Us

Johnny Flash Productions

Johnny Flash Productions is a creative agency based outside of Washington D.C. that focuses on digital strategy, web design and development, graphic design and event production that helps businesses get better results from their marketing.