10 signs your business website needs a redesign
Score your site in 5 minutes and find out whether you're losing customers to an outdated website. Every item comes with how to self-check and how much it's costing you.
How to use it
For each of the 10 items, score your site from 1 (great) to 5 (critically bad). If you're not sure, give it a 3. At the bottom you'll see your total score and a recommendation on whether you need a redesign now or can wait.
The site takes longer than 3 seconds to load
After a 3-second wait, 53% of mobile visitors close the tab. Those are customers lost before they ever saw your offer.
Check at pagespeed.web.dev or gtmetrix.com: enter your URL and look at the load time for mobile and desktop.
Every extra second of loading costs roughly 7% of enquiries. At 1,000 visitors a month that is dozens of lost requests.
Layout breaks or text is too small on mobile
60-80% of traffic now comes from phones. If your site is awkward on mobile, you're losing the majority of your audience.
Open the site on a phone and check: can buttons be tapped with a finger without zooming? Is the text readable without scaling? Does the menu work?
An awkward mobile version loses up to 70% of visitors. Google also ranks such sites lower.
No HTTPS, so browsers show "Not secure"
Without an SSL certificate, browsers scare visitors with a security warning. Many will close the site without trying to understand why.
Open your site. If there's no lock icon to the left of the domain in the address bar, you don't have HTTPS.
A site without HTTPS loses up to half its visitors at the browser warning alone. Google ranks such sites lower too.
The design looks like it's from 2015-2018
Visitors compare your site to Apple, Stripe and Notion, which they see every day. A dated design leaves the impression that the service is dated too.
Signs: heavy shadows and gradients, fonts smaller than 14 pixels, narrow text columns, glossy buttons, banners on an automatic carousel.
A dated design lowers trust. A competitor with a modern site gets the enquiry even when their service is weaker.
No clear call to action
Visitors shouldn't have to guess what to do next. If there's no obvious button above the fold, they leave.
Open your homepage and ask yourself: in 3 seconds, is it clear what you offer and what to click to order? If you have to scroll or think, that's a problem.
Pages with one clear call to action on the first screen bring in 2–3 times more enquiries than pages with a dozen scattered links.
No pricing on the site, or it's hidden
A customer compares 3–5 options before buying. If your site says «call us for a price», they will go to a competitor who shows theirs.
Are there specific prices on your site, or at least a "from X to Y" range? If not, this point is about you.
Open pricing raises enquiries by 30–50%. It is especially noticeable for salons, auto services and other companies selling services.
Google doesn't find the site by your company name
If your site doesn't show up first when searching the exact company name, Google has indexing issues, and you'll never rank for anything else either.
Search Google for "your company name + city." The site should be in the top 3 results. If it's not, that's a red flag.
Without SEO visibility you only get traffic from ads or direct links. Organic search is free customers you're missing.
Only stock photos, no real images
Stock photos read instantly as "generic template." Trust comes from real photos of the team, the space and the work.
Walk through your site. How many photos are actually yours, and how many are smiling Shutterstock people in suits?
Sites with real photos of the team and the work bring in 1.5–2 times more enquiries than templated ones. For services and local business it is the deciding factor.
Forms don't work, links go nowhere
If a visitor wanted to send an enquiry and the form returned an error, they will not come back. A broken link means an immediate exit.
Fill in the contact form on your own site as an ordinary customer. Did the notification arrive? Do all the menu items work? Does every button respond?
A broken form takes away every enquiry you could have received. It is the most expensive problem on the list.
Fewer than 2% of visitors send an enquiry, or you do not know
A good services site turns 3–5% of visitors into enquiries. Below 2% is a signal that the site is not coping. And if you do not measure it at all, the position is worse still.
Open Google Analytics or Plausible. What share of visitors sends an enquiry? Below 2% is a problem. If you do not measure it, install analytics today.
Raising the enquiry rate from 1.5% to 3% doubles the number of customers on the same traffic. That is what a site refresh is for.
Want a free 30-minute audit of your site?
We will show you on screen exactly what is working badly, give you 2–3 quick improvements you can make without a full rebuild, and name the cost of a full rebuild. No obligation.
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