Much like life itself, times change, and we change with it. Businesses move to newer, better locations, their buildings get facelifts so that their physical presence is greater than ever before, and new ideals become prevalent in the company’s overall brand.

So why do so many websites not get updated alongside these changes? Because for all the best websites we get to see in our industry, there’s a lot more that look like they haven’t been touched or updated since 2005 or so.

How can we tell? Lots of ways. For example:

  • Hosting belongs to Angelfire or Geocities
  • Copyright date hasn’t been changed, or there is none to see
  • Dead links have been placed everywhere
  • Font has run out of its appeal (I’m looking at you, Comic Sans)
  • The most recent blog post on your site is dated 2013 and older
  • And more

If this sounds anything similar to what’s being presented or featured on your website, you could be in trouble. A website that remains static and unchanging is considered to be a “dead” entity – offering nothing of value to the user looking you up. If you’re getting traffic but it’s not leading to sales, that’s another sign of a much-needed update.

Don’t believe us? Here are some more reasons why you may need to update your website’s design, preferably sooner than later.

Your Website Ranks Below #51 on Search Engines

If you haven’t checked your relevance on search engines lately, odds are your website may be sitting in spot number 51+ on Google, Yahoo, or Bing. With so much information and knowledge available now about search engine optimization (SEO) and how much it benefits websites in the long run, you have officially run out of excuses to not update your website.

Add alt text, update your contact info, and brush up on your knowledge of what keywords you’re trying to target – maybe they’re not doing as well as you think they are. If you don’t do so, consider your website left behind in the dust.

Your Company’s Brand or Overall Strategy has Changed

Think back to what the goal of your company was back in 2005. Has that goal changed since your brand was first established? Do you have a different way of marketing to your target audience now? Have you had your logo redesigned on your business cards, but not on your website? Do you want to leave a lasting first impression that reflects well on your business?

If you answered yes to at least one or more of these questions, you need to bring that sense of rejuvenated determination to your website and update it. Doing so will help reflect that same sense of newness about your company’s brand or goal, and help you become more relevant online.

Your Content is Outdated

Aside from having no evergreen content, featured content such as outdated contact details, old news articles on the blog, or absolutely no content since 2005 or so – all of this will have a negative impact on your website and how it’s being presented to the rest of the world. Content is king – this is the golden rule of websites overall. Why else have we been publishing blog posts on our website devoted to this subject?

Speaking of content being a big help…

You Have Outdated or No Social Media to Offer

The thing about 2005 is even though Facebook was released a year prior, many other social media platforms were being used to great extent: MySpace, Friendster, and the now obsolete SixDegrees.com were all the most widely used platforms before Facebook was introduced to the realm of the world wide web, and all the other familiars – Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and so on – followed suit.

If you’re still featuring the aforementioned social media platforms, or refuse to join in the social media world, not only are you deliberately harming your website’s chances of success, but also you’re going to miss out on a whole new spectrum of people who may be interested in your product or services. Update your website and while you’re at it, update your social media. There’s almost no excuse to not do so at this point.

Your Website is Filled with Dead Links

Next to broken links, dead links that lead a user to nowhere is one of many, many ways to drive traffic away from your website. If your website still features pages that no longer apply to your services, or host links that lead to 404 (page not found) errors or forbidden pages, you’re in trouble.

If you have a blog and haven’t updated the links in the content either, that’s another way of offering dead links to your target audience, too. Why? Because the majority of news websites don’t hold on to old news; they regularly update their content in order to stay in touch with current events, live footage, and so on. Take a page out of their notebook and apply the same tactic to your website: if something is out of date or irrelevant, therefore leading to old news or a dead web page, remove it from your website. Your customers will be thankful you did so.

We could go on at great length about the reasons why you need update your website’s design, but we’ll spare you the trouble and ask you nicely: please, please take another look at your website. If the copyright date in the footer still says anything older than 2016, it’s time for an upgrade. Let our professionals at V3 Media help get the job done. We have the qualifications and the skills needed to bring your website out of the past and into our modern era.