Simply having a website for your business is not enough to be successful online. Your web design should be up to date with the latest online trends, both in design and technology to attract viewers and convey an image of your business as sophisticated and professional.
Trends in web design progress almost as fast as seasonal fashion trends, so your site, which features all the cool contemporary practices from a few years ago, may now be noticeably out of date. Updating your website can also present new online sales and marketing opportunities for your business that would not have been possible with your previous website design.
Here are some tips on how to tell if your web design needs an update:
- Design features: You don’t have to look far for the web design aesthetic that professionals despise as outdated and old-fashioned. Half-naughty design features like grunge backgrounds, reflective features, cute animal mascots, and giant RSS icons are gradually being ignored in favor of cleaner, simpler web page designs. Even the web design motifs popularly used last year, such as nostalgic images and backgrounds with paper textures, coffee cup stains and polaroid photo frames, no longer match modern design principles. Aesthetic trends online move so fast simply because most of the popular trends are quickly overused, become stale and lose their impact. A good way to avoid the daunting problem of web design trends is to create successful website designs without slavishly following trends, and instead design to appeal to your particular audience, using classic design principles.
- Business expansion: Web design updates should also be made when your business grows and expands. It is very easy to create sites and leave them; they do not take up any physical space and can be easily forgotten. However, the most successful websites are constantly reviewed for relevant content that reflects the business they represent. Sometimes simply adding new pages to your layout is enough to reflect small changes to your business, although full revisions may be needed to accommodate major expansions and new directions taken.
- User experience: One of the most obvious markers of an outdated web page design is content and navigation that are not user-friendly. If finding, navigating and accessing the information on your site is not easy for your visitors, then your website is not serving its most basic purpose and needs to be updated.