In this day and age where the vast majority of consumers make their purchases online, having a modernized website is key to a successful business. A website that’s up-to-date allows your business to stand out and make it more accessible to your prospective clients. What your website looks like and how it performs will have a dramatic impact on how your customers perceive your brand. Like they always say, first impressions last and you want to show your customers that you value their user experience more than anything else. Engaging in website design and development services might be the best thing you do in 2020.

If your website feels archaic and is due for a make-over, here are 5 compelling reasons you should modernize your website this 2020.

1. Improves your website’s performance

Regardless of how much money you spend, if its architecture of your website isn’t well-built, then you’re likely to encounter several issues that could affect user experience like:

• Slow websites – Oversized images, poorly built themes, excessive plugins, and misconfigured server resources can make a website feel sluggish. If you want to find out how your website is performing, you can use tools like Google PageSpeed and learn how to optimize your pages across all devices, whether it be desktops, smartphones, or laptops.
• Not mobile friendly – According to Statista, roughly 52.2% of worldwide traffic was generated through mobile devices in 2018. This means that if your website isn’t mobile-friendly, then you’re losing a huge amount of leads and potential customers. A mobile-friendly website essentially simplifies the navigation process and makes it easy for your website visitors to find what they need.
• Confusing website features – While adding third-party plugins do help in increasing your website’s functionality, they have to be managed and updated on a regular basis. Things like contact forms, shopping cart widgets, and pop-up widgets need to be optimized so it won’t make navigating the website confusing.

2. Updates the look of your website

Even if your customers have no experience in web design, they can clearly tell whether a website is outdated or not. In reality, customers are more likely to do business with a brand that has an up-to-date website which feels responsive and easy to navigate. Just take a look at the competition and see how they’ve modernized their websites. If you haven’t updated your website in years, you’ll be surprised as to how engaging and modern-looking their websites are compared to yours.

3. Makes your content look clear and concise

Having high-quality, relevant content on your website will go a long way towards improving your search engine visibility and customer retention rate. Along with updating your website, your content should accurately represent your brand in a way that your customers can easily digest. Expertly crafted web copy can tremendously enhance the quality of your content and generate more interest from your target audience. Pair that with a well-built website and your site visitors are sure to engage more with your content.

4. Improves on-site search functionality

You can create meaningful content for your site visitors, but if they can’t access them easily, then they’re pretty much worthless. A modernized website enables users to locate the right information, products, and services at the right time. They want immediate results and this is something that old websites struggle to provide. Are you guilty of using too many sub-levels before your customer finds what they’re looking for? Then you may consider changing that to improve your website’s search functionality.

The goal here is to make your website feel intuitive. Is everything accessible from the homepage? If not, you should definitely rethink your website and make it more user-friendly from your customer’s point of view.

5. Allows you to hit your goals more consistently

At the end of the day, a modernized website will set you up for greater success in terms of generating leads, revenue, and website visitors. Keep in mind that your website is alive and dynamic. It’s purpose is to serve your customer base 24/7. As such, it’s important to factor in things such as faster landing page loading times, a compelling call-to-action (CTA), and overall a cleaner, more refreshing website that appeals to your customers.

Your competitors are most likely updating their websites as well, meaning you’ll face stiff competition if your website looks old and feels sluggish. While redesigning your website is no easy task, it will definitely pay off dividends in the long run.

Hopefully these 5 reasons will help convince you to update your website and make functional updates to better serve your site visitors and assist you in reaching your marketing goals better.