jeff adams

When should you upgrade? How do you go about upgrading and how often should you upgrade? This article looks at these questions and does it’s best to help you with the answers.

Unlike printed material, your website isn’t set in ink. You can change it anytime you want, you can add news items, link to other sites or even add a blog for the most simplest of website upgrade.

Good Reasons to Upgrade

There are plenty of reasons for upgrading your website, and here are a few of them.

1. Your Website is Stale

If your site has become stale, or the content dated then it is a good chance to update the content as well as freshen up other areas of your website. Why not combine this with a sales drive or mail shot to existing customers. Think about this “Hi Mr Adams, We’re writing to let you know that we’ve just re-designed our website and would like to invite you to come and take a look”.

2. Your Target Audience Has Evolved

So now your target audience isn’t just young men from 19-24 but also now include females or young mums. This is a common reason to upgrade your “dark and grungy” design that fitted so well with the male audience.

You’d be surprised what sort of impact your choice of colours have on men and women, but be sure to do your homework and don’t go down the “blue is for boys, pink is for girls” approach.

3. Compatibility

If your website was designed before 2005 then chances are it is no longer compatible with modern browsers. This might not seem such a problem if your company hasn’t changed it’s browser, but it might make your website look completely different in one of the modern browsers such as Safari or Firefox.

4. The Right Time to Upgrade

This question is open ended; one could argue that your website should be being upgraded permanently. What this term means for this article is the larger design changes rather than adding articles or news stories.

The truth is there is no best time. If anything, there are preferable times like if you have a big sales push or a host of new products to sell, but generally speaking there is no time like the present – what are you waiting for? Remember, if your clients don’t find what they want on your website, they’ll go to the competition.

Conclusion

This post could feel like me delivering a sales pitch, but the truth is if even one of the above rings alarm bells for you then you need to get in touch and let me give you a free consultation.

The truth is, all sites are upgradable and not always at a huge cost. The problems is people pay a lot for the full site, and then leave it for a few years before having a brand new one and then spending even more money – this is a waste. If you have it designed the first time and keep in contact with your designer, chances are he or she will save you a fortune when it comes to “adding that new blog thing” or “my boss says we should be selling on our website, help me!” situations.

This isn’t an extensive list, but it does hopefully give you a better idea of when to upgrade your website and the importance of keeping your website fresh and updated.