Not updated your website in a while? If your website fits within any of the following subheadings, maybe it’s time to start thinking about speaking to some professional website designers for advice.
1) Gratuitous usage of Flash animation
Before the second coming of Apple, Flash was the no.1 choice for web designers using funkily designed movements or creative visual styling (we know as we used to do a lot of it). As most people are becoming aware, Flash isn’t compatible across the iOS platform used by Apple. This means, in simple terms, that if your relying upon using Flash animation across large parts of your website, it will not work on any versions of the iPad, iPhone or iPod touch! Apple believes Flash is buggy and unreliable and instead prefer to back themselves using HTML5. As you would expect Abode (current creators of Flash) are working around this but be prepared to wait some time.
2) Size is important
The most noticeable sign that you're in need of a makeover is the width of your website. With more and more computers being sold with widescreen monitors, your site that was originally designed for 800 x 600 pixel screen resolution will now look very small on a 1280 x 960 or larger screen resolution. This is now a commonly designed for width but there are ways you can resize your resolution depending upon the browser you are using. If your website was created a few years ago, there's a good chance that your site was designed to accommodate smaller screen resolutions and needs to be brought up to date, especially if it was built with an inflexible, unresponsive design.
3) Fresh content is king
We constantly come across websites which are out of date. Some of them may as well have cobwebs hanging from the corners of their home pages. Simple things, such as keeping your copyright date current or keeping on top of your news feed gives the impression your business takes your website seriously. As we have blogged before, your website is your 24/7 salesperson that should stay fresh and relevant. If your last news post was before Dec 2009 then we would like to suggest some alternative ideas to save you time and keep your website rejuvenated. Oh, let’s not forget that this will also have a detrimental effect to your natural search marketing. Have you noticed visitor numbers declining recently?
4) Tiny / Inaccessible area
Another area of outdated design are websites that have a large web space with tiny clickable areas. For example, a large box on the home page which says “News” and a tiny hyperlink at the bottom of the box saying “Read More”. It’s the simple things, but as we (the general public) are used to using well designed, navigable sites (e.g. BBC / Easyjet etc.), poorly designed, out of date corporate sites really give a detrimental effect to the company or brand.
5) Bad Navigation
Another bug bear of ours is out of date navigation or links to pages which don’t exist. Sometimes businesses will try to cut corners and bolt on additional content to existing sites. When done well, this works fine but we regularly see broken navigation/links/errors and when you consider that the average time for a new user viewing your website is well under 30 seconds, then you have to get this right first time.
To summarise
Our micro-rant is over but essentially your website works for your business in providing updated information on products or services. Even if you’re not selling something online, it still will provide new and existing customers and partners with useful content. Get in touch if you want to maximise your online presence with the friendliest website designers in Guildford.