It’s that time of year. Starting January 1 (and even before then) we talk about reinventing our brands, our marketing focus and our vision. We assess whether or not our website messaging is still keeping up with our brand, as well as our traffic and inbound marketing demands that we place on our website. 

Around here we are huge advocates for making improvements to your existing website with the continuous improvement model. The idea behind continuous improvement is to create a sustainable monthly budget for your website development work and continue to improve your website over time, rather than doing a full overhaul every few years. However, this requires your website to actually still be functioning for your needs. 

That’s what this article is all about - determining whether or not your existing website still serves you. Here are some points to help you determine whether you need a full website redesign or if you can just go ahead and adopt the continuous improvement model. 

Related: HubSpot CMS Web Design - The Continuous Improvement Model

Your marketing team hates your website

Website usability and user experience for the people that work behind the scenes uploading content and creating landing pages is one of the most important aspects of the success of your website. Your marketers should be able to add content with ease and easily suggest improvements that make their lives easier. If your marketing team is handicapped by the functionality behind the scenes or has a mile-long list of feature requests, it’s probably time to re-do your website.

The framework and platform that your website is built on is one of the most important aspects of the long term success of your website - if yours is failing your marketing team and they’re becoming increasingly frustrated with the handicaps behind the scenes, it’s time for an upgrade. 

Your website is starting to run more slowly or break more often

If you’re on Wordpress, you’ll definitely see this a little more than if you’re on HubSpot. Website bloat is such a huge issue with businesses that start with a simple website and add increasing functionality as they grow. Your WordPress plugins aren’t always properly maintained, they can also bog down your main theme framework and add security holes if the original developer isn’t maintaining and updating them properly. 

Lack of updates for your WordPress website plugins can also cause your website to break or go down. Never underestimate how costly it is for a website to go down. Oshyn breaks down the true cost of website downtime here. 

We refer back very frequently to this blog that breaks down the factors bogging down your website, and even beyond plugins for WordPress websites, there are a lot of factors like large images, legacy code and scripts that bog down your website over time. We often are asked to perform website speed performance audits to determine what factors are holding a website back from a a better score in Google Core Vitals. If your score is looking a little high, it’s worth exploring a website redesign to get your page speed in line. 

Your website is not ranking as well as it used to

Search engine rankings change almost constantly and over the last few years Google has really focused even more on quality original content, organic keyword optimization, page speed, usability and mobile friendliness. If your website is aging, you might not have a mobile optimized menu, your content library might not be very user friendly, your keyword frequency could seem a little unnatural, or your page speed might be suffering.

Finding a website framework on a platform that is simple and can still perform matters. Unfortunately when frameworks and platforms are selected, price and aesthetics are usually the first consideration and those don’t always serve your buyer or give you the best opportunity to succeed. 

Related: It’s time to leave WordPress for HubSpot CMS

You’ve been through a few different developers.

Not every developer is created equal. It’s the most obvious statement to make, but not many people realize how important it is to find and stick with a skilled developer. Computan.com described it best: 

“Asking a new developer to work on an old developer’s code is like asking a cook to continue making a dish that the old cook has left unfinished. There’s so little time and the customer is waiting on the table. The new chef has to figure out what ingredients are in the dish, how much more time it needs in the oven, and what more needs to be added.”

It makes things a little more difficult. Not to mention the previous developer might have had different skills, different coding standards, and their documentation might be inadequate. A gifted chef can easily replicate the recipe if these things are honored, but if the developer that came before them didn’t leave behind proper documentation or didn’t uphold best practice coding standards, things can get complicated quickly.

On many occasions we’ve had projects referred to us that other developers couldn’t get to the finish line. We jokingly say that we’re the final destination for Wordpress and HubSpot projects - in the least cryptic way possible. Our clients and supporters know that we’re more than capable of taking a partially completed dish and turning into a work of art. 

If you’ve been through a few different developers with your website, documentation and coding standards may be all over the place. Your framework might be a bit of a mess and it may be best to just start from scratch. It’ll help your new development partner work more efficiently and you’ll get more from your budget as a result. 

It no longer reflects your brand 

Brand transformations happen over time, especially when company leadership changes. Even just a listen to a new inspiring book can send off the executive team into crafting a new vision and mission story. As your business grows, you’ll likely shift who you’re serving, how you’re serving them and how you communicate your brand’s individual story. The website that you started with or even that saw you through the last few years of your journey may not be the website that will get you to the next level.

After you take a deep dive into who your organization is, what needs you serve for your clients and customers and how you want to organize your content and serve your customers moving forward, you may find that a website redesign is not only necessary, but will help you grow into the goals you’re trying to achieve in the next few years. 

You’ve re-evaluated your customer journey

As we mentioned above, the evolution of your customer base and product offerings happens over time to any successful business. Evolution in business is as critical as operations management in what our friend Simon Sinek calls The Infinite Game (read this book) of business. Every so often, good marketers know that they need to explore the buyer journey in relation to the entire lifetime of any customer and continue to service needs long after they’ve made a buying decision. 

Adding client login portals, special calculators, automations, smart content and other elements to your website is the perfect way to continue to cultivate your customer relationships in a complex customer journey, but that has to be done on a framework and platform that can handle all of that. If you’ve got a WordPress website or poorly coded framework in HubSpot - you’re going to be handicapped. 

Related: 5 Things to Add to your Website Budget in 2023

Odds are good that you have some aggressive growth plans for 2023. 

“This is the year we _______!” (fill in the blank). After Covid shutdowns, massive supply chain issues, inflation, freight costs and other rising costs, 2020-2022 have been a wild ride for most businesses. But this year is a different story. If you’re getting ready to supercharge your marketing efforts in an attempt to attain your huge goals that you’ve set for this year, you need to make sure that your website is equipped to handle that.

We hope that you’re taking the time to really unpack your existing efforts and website as compared to the goals that you have for this year. Partnering up with a skilled developer, putting your website onto a stable platform and selecting the right framework will do wonders for your 2023 website goals and help you better communicate with your chosen audience.

When it comes to HubSpot CMS, development can be particularly pricey. Thankfully, we’ve developed a more cost effective wireframe option for smaller businesses that want to transfer to HubSpot CMS. The wireframe allows you to choose from a number of extremely versatile modules and can be styled to your unique design. It’s optimized, super fast and will provide you with a great foundation towards optimizing your search rankings. We’re piloting this option for a few of our best clients right now and they’re loving the results. 

Thinking of a new website in the new year? We can help with that.