5 Ways to Tell f You Need a New Website for Your Small Business

We have all been to websites that blow us away.

Some in a good way (amazing design, super easy to use, loads fast) and others in an awful way (looks old, doesn't load, links don't work).  

TL;DR: If you haven't done a rebuild on your website in the past five years, chances are you are not presenting your best foot forward to your potential clients.

You may need a new website if:

1. You can't remember the last time you updated your website
2. You have never accessed the back end of your website or don't know how
3. There is more text than imagery on your website
4. You still have a "Sign Up for My Newsletter" form on your website
5. You aren't actively collecting email addresses with an automated sales funnel

For most business owners, updating your website seems like a monumental task. Just think of all of the unknowns:

• Who knows how much it is going to cost you?
• What sort of downtime will I have?  
• Am I going to have to come up with all of the new content?  
• How will it affect my Google Rank?

No wonder most business owners put off rebuilding their website. But eventually, there will come the point where you need to take the first step to refresh your site.

So we created a simple guide to help you figure out if you are to that point yet. Do you need to create a new website? If you can identify with any of these five statements, it is time to have a conversation.

1) You can't remember the last time you updated your website.

Most business websites are static. While that shouldn't be the case, it is the reality.  

But your website should have helpful, relevant content on it. If there is anything that is no longer applicable to your business, but it is still on your website, you need to fix it.  

If there are broken links on your website, your best bet may be to consider a refresh.  

If there are people listed or pictured on your website which no longer work for your company, you need to fix it.  

If there are still pages on your website that say "Under Construction" or "Coming Soon," you need to fix it.

If your website is not a current and accurate reflection of your business, it will give your visitor the wrong first impression. With so much competition in the market, you need to put your best online foot forward.

2) You have never accessed the backend of your website, or you don't know how.

This closely relates to #1. 

The key here is that if you don't have access to update your website, you can't stay relevant to current events.

The global COVID-19 pandemic is a perfect example. If you cannot update your business hours or highlight changes to your business on your website, people are not going to take you seriously.

You either need to have direct access to your website to make changes, or you need to have direct access to someone who can on your behalf. 

If you are using someone else to manage your site, how responsive are they? 

Do they get back to you quickly and make your updates rapidly? 

If not, consider finding a new website manager. Small changes are straightforward to make and should be addressed promptly.

3) There is more text than imagery on your website.

If you go to your website and one of the first things you see is a paragraph of text (anywhere "above the fold"), you need a new design.

It should be no surprise to anyone that people don't read websites; they scan them. Walls of text only tell the visitor to skip this section.

Your website should be mostly images that communicate how you want visitors to feel when they use your service. Some photos may relate to how they feel right now, but most of them should show "images of success."

Having images is important because we understand pictures in a fraction of a second when it takes us much longer to read the text. If we see an image that we can relate to, we stop and read the associated text because we want to know how we can be like the people in the picture.

When you have text, especially on your home page, most of it needs to be in headings and lists. That way, it is scannable.  

You can put more in-depth information on subpages or "Read More" links. But if you blast your visitor with a wall of text on a website, it is a guaranteed way to get them to skip that part of your website.

4) You still have a "Sign Up For My Newsletter" form on your website.

Some people still swear by their newsletter.  

Yet, it takes a tremendous amount of work to produce new content regularly. That is time taken away from actually running your business or leading your team.

Most people will not sign up for a newsletter because they don't know what they are signing up for. Are they going to receive an email once a day, a week, a month, ever? And what sort of content are they getting? Is it going to be something I want to read? Will it be simple to opt-out?

Newsletters are a thing of the past. Most people don't sign up for them, and fewer people read them. The few I get, I open just to see their structure and headlines, pitying them for all the time they spent writing, editing, and formatting.  

But that doesn't mean you shouldn't have some sort of way to capture email addresses. There is just a better way, which leads to #5.

5) You don't have an automated sales funnel on your website.

Sales Funnels = Survival

It is that simple. You need sales funnels (yes, multiple) to survive in our digital economy. You need a way to offer free valuable content to your potential visitors to start a relationship.  

The reason sales funnels work is because they take your visitor through the three steps of any relationship.

1. Curiosity
2. Enlightenment
3. Commitment
   

So many businesses forget about the first two stages and only focus on commitment.  

But a well-crafted sales funnel will spark someone's curiosity either with a catchy title or image. The content of that original content will begin to enlighten them on how you can make their lives better. Follow that up with an automated email sequence and continue the enlightenment stage until they are ready to commit to working with you.  

This doesn't happen overnight. Often it can take months or even years. But the companies that build multiple sales funnels and do them well see fantastic growth. (We include ourselves in that group.)

Now you have a growing list of email subscribers who know what you do and want to continue hearing from you. So you continue to offer more and more value to them. Over time you become the de-facto expert in your field because you have continued to provide value over time. So when they need the service you offer, you are the only choice in their mind because you have earned their trust by following the stages of a relationship.

All this being said, building a new website is not hard. Finding a trusted partner who will do the heavy lifting for you is hard.  

You need a company with a proven systematic process for building amazing websites and sales funnels that work. That doesn't mean we use templates or themes or the same approach to every client. What it does mean is that we have an efficient way to take an active approach to your project.

Our proven process has taken many old, outdated websites and turned them into revenue-generating machines.

If you are ready to have a conversation about what it would take to create your revenue-generating machine, schedule a quick 15-minute discovery call. This call is a perfect chance to ask all of your questions and get a quote for your project. We can't wait to hear from you.