Why Your Website Needs to Stay Up to Date

Written by: Alyse Tucker-Bounds

There are a multitude of different species in our world, which all experience it slightly differently – dogs, for example, experience the world through their noses and the first thing that a dog will do when it comes across something will be to smell it, meaning that they will often approach things that we wouldn’t dream of going near. 

Humans experience the world visually and will make very complex judgements based solely on the way that a thing looks – we are often told not to judge a book by its cover, however, that is generally exactly what we do. 

The implications of this for businesses and organizations are clear – everything that is associated with their company must project the correct image or prospective clients and partners will make unfair assumptions about the way that they are.

This is especially important in the digital world, where there isn’t anything to mitigate a bad first impression. 

A website is an extension of an organization’s brand, providing users with vital information about what that company is like – if it is out of date, difficult to use or looks unattractive, then rightly or wrongly people will assume that the owner of the website, doesn’t care and is not good at what they do.

At the Virtual Marketing Directors, we are passionate about helping businesses maximize their chance of success – providing a holistic approach to website design that seeks to present exceptional businesses in the way that they deserve. 

If your website is out of date, then it could really be holding you back, here are some of the reasons why.

No Man Steps in the Same River Twice

An ancient Greek philosopher, called Heraclitus, once said “No man ever steps in the same river twice, because it is not the same river and he is not the same man” – the perfect illustration of how change is inevitable. 

The same is true of businesses – they are changing, evolving and growing every single day. 

However, this is not always reflected on their websites, which can be really detrimental to their success – they are not telling prospective partners or investors about all the amazing things that they are doing or are not showing their prospective customers their products in the best way possible. 

It isn’t advisable to apply for a job with a C.V. that is five years old and nor is it advisable to have a website that fails to reflect the dynamic and improving company that you are.

Make a Good First Impression

A 2006 study conducted by the Journal of Behaviour and Information Technology found that users would make a judgement about a website in just 50 milliseconds[i]. 

This makes it imperative that your website is attractive and supplies a simple message, because otherwise, no matter how good your content is, users will just click away.

Presentation Matters

Imagine that I have an amazing business idea and I am going to pitch it to a group of investors – no matter how good my idea was, I would have to dress up and put on smart clothes, because the way that I look is sending a message to them. 

If I were to attend the presentation wearing tatty clothes and flip flops, they would think that I am unprofessional and not the kind of person that they would like to invest in. 

The same is true of a company’s website – no matter how good the idea is, if it looks bad, people are unlikely to want to engage.

Brand Projection

Brands are complicated things that change over time and it is imperative that your website reflects your brand. 

Micro-targeting and appealing to the right demographic is becoming more and more important and your website must be up to date if you are going to do that successfully.

SEO

Google was originally designed to mimic the academic system of citation – thus the more ‘links’ a website had, the higher it appeared in the Google rankings. 

However, this led to a series of unscrupulous sites ‘gaming’ the search engine, by just creating loads of fake links. 

Google decided to reprogram its algorithm to value websites according to the quality of their content and one of the ways it recognizes this is by how often the website is updated. 

Thus, old websites, which aren’t updated very often tend to look more like spam to Google, meaning that it drops them down the ranking system. 

So, keeping your website updated, not only improves the user experience, but also helps you maintain or improve your all-important Google ranking – a win-win situation.

The March of Technology

Digital technology improves at break-neck speed and users expect companies to be at the cutting edge of it. 

This is especially true for images and video – with users expecting websites to have high quality images that load quickly. 

This is borne out by a study, which found that users spend 5.59 seconds looking at a website’s main image, compared to 5.56 seconds looking at the website’s copy[ii]. 

Thus, your main image is as important as the content surrounding it and we highly recommend using the most modern technology to display it. 

The technology that backs websites is also important – and a study found that users would click away from a website if it took longer than 2 seconds to load[iii].

How do people see you?

Your website is an extension of your brand and is likely to be the first thing that people who are interested in your company will look at. 

This means that it must be perfect and represent your beliefs, values and public image. 

A remarkable, 75% of users admit to making judgements about a company based upon the appearance of their website[iv] - make sure that they make the right judgement about your organization. 

At VMD we are passionate about helping companies be the best they possibly can be, contact a member of our team to see just how much we can help you.  

To learn more about how first impressions make all the difference in web, view our page here.

[i]  Gitte Lindgaard, Gary Fernandes, Cathy Dudek & J. Brown ‘Attention web designers: You have 50 milliseconds to make a good first impression!’ Behaviour & Information Technology Volume 25, 2006 - Issue 2   

[ii] https://conversionxl.com/blog/10-useful-findings-about-how-people-view-websites/

[iii] https://curatti.com/web-design-usability/

[iv] https://www.kinesisinc.com/the-truth-about-web-design/