When you upgrade your website, you mean business.
  • Eight reasons you should update and upgrade your website now

    December 31, 2022

    Benefits of updating or upgrading your website

    Benefits of updating or upgrading your website

    by Maureen McCabe (revised 12-31-2022)

    Change, for change’s sake, is never a great business strategy. But there are good reasons to get a ‘new’ redesigned website. Here are eight of the most important reasons.

    1. Update the website for mobile visitors

    The nature of the Internet has been rapidly changing, and StatCounter is the best source for metrics. Monthly reports are available and use ‘page views’ (not unique visitors per site per day), giving the fairest approximation of internet usage. Like Google Analytics, desktop metrics include laptops.

    Mobile is 2.5% more popular than desktop/laptop for Americans. Compared to Canadians, desktop/laptop is 13% higher than mobile.

    The first number represents December 2022, then December 2019, and January 2018 (when they first started measuring page views) by country:

    U.S.A.

    • Desktop/Laptop:  47.7%   (50.3% / 53%)
    • Mobile:                 49.4%  (45.1% / 39%)
    • Tablet:                    2.9%  (4.7 % / 7.8%)

    Canada

    • Desktop/Laptop:  54.2%  (52.6% / 56.7%)
    • Mobile:                  41.0%  (41.0% / 31.2%)
    • Tablet:                      4.4%  (6.4% / 11.7%)

    If your website isn’t fully “responsive,” you are losing out big time. A wholesale redesign of your website is probably needed, which will help increase traffic and drive more inquiries and sales.

    Search engines place a high value on responsive websites. So even your desktop visitors may increase once the search engines realize that you have a new, mobile-friendly website.

    2. Upgrade the website with a website server

    Search engines and browsers are looking to see how secure your website is. If your domain still starts with HTTP:// rather than HTTPS://, some browsers will alert users that your website is not secure. Even if your website ranks #1 for a search term, the number two website might get more customers.

    Your site will rank better when you use HTTPS, as search engines prefer to send users to safe, secure websites, so they might favour a competitor over you if that competitor’s website is secure.

    This is one website upgrade that doesn’t require a wholesale redesign. Some tech work is in the background, although your website might need a new, secure server. Ideally, you would also update links to your website from social media profiles and elsewhere to include HTTPS://.

    3. Update the website for the best first impressions

    Styles come, and fashions go. Website design is about style. The early web was a cluttered, crowded place. Then three dimensions were discovered, giving a cleaner look and a sense of depth. As mobile became popular, everyone flattened their logos to match cell phone icons. Instagram’s logo is an excellent example of this, moving from clean 3D, complete with shadowing, to a flat design.

    As styles change, your website can quickly look dated. Three years is a long time on the Internet. People generally like to buy from companies that are up to speed and appear to know what’s going on, so updating your website style can pay off.

    4. Update the website to meet changing expectations

    One of the most compelling reasons to update your website is to match people’s expectations. Some of the expectations that have changed over the past five years include the following:

    • speed, how quickly a page loads
    • ease of use, otherwise known as “user experience.”
    • trust and more believable testimonials
    • security, it must start with HTTPS://
    • multimedia, such as videos, podcasts, webinars, vid blogs

    Consumers will be more likely to buy from your new, updated website.

    5. Upgrade your website with multimedia

    Video, and sometimes audio and infographics, can help get your message across. People are often lazy. Sometimes they prefer watching a video or watching an infographic rather than reading. More importantly, a video allows them to get to know you in a way that ‘simulates’ walking into your office or store.

    Audio is also popular, as more and more people listen to podcasts. Different people consume websites in different ways. The more ways you provide information, the larger the customer base you can build. Podcast listening is particularly popular on mobile.

    Did you know prospective customers will stay longer on your homepage if there’s a video?

    6. Update your website with search engine optimization

    SEO remains the same, but SEO changes – yes, it isn’t apparent. While the principles of optimizing your pages haven’t changed a lot over the years, many of the technical aspects have changed. We’ve already discussed secure servers, website speed and mobile-friendliness.

    How people search for changes, too. People are using voice search, which often leads to exploring with questions. Language evolves, too, and people will sometimes use different combinations of words than they did just a few years ago. As people update their language, you should update your website language to match how they search. Re-optimizing your website makes sense.

    If nothing was to change in the search engines or with the searchers, you could boost your SEO by updating your content. That’s because the search engines like serving fresh content to their users, so they track how recently a web page was updated.

    7. Update your website to reflect changes to your business

    Of course, the most urgent need for a new or updated website is a change in your industry. You might have added or withdrawn a product line. You might have added maintenance plans or locations. There are thousands of ways your business might have changed, and sometimes the website needs an overhaul to accommodate the changes.

    8. Mobile-first indexing – started in July 2019

    Mobile-first indexing means Google predominantly uses the mobile version of the content for indexing and ranking. Historically, the index primarily used the desktop version of a page’s content when evaluating the relevance of a page to a user’s query.

    As many users now access Google Search with a mobile device, as of July 2019, the Googlebot will primarily crawl and index pages with the smartphone agent.

    An upgraded website means new business.

    Change, for change’s sake, is a waste of time. But if your website hasn’t been significantly updated in over five years, there might be several good reasons to start planning for an upgrade now.

    Do you need help determining the next steps? Rely on McCabe Marketing’s experienced web team to develop and/or project manage your new or upgraded website.

    Like what you've read? Please share this article, here:

  1. Philip Verghese Ariel09:19am,

    Hi Maureen,

    It is indeed a great joy to be here today to read this informative piece. I found this post link curated on the pages of BizSugar by one of my friends David Leonhardt. I upvoted the content and posted a comment there.

    Thanks for the share, it is very necessary to update our existing post according to the new developments happening around. Otherwise, the post will surely be counted as an outdated one.

    The benefits of updating or upgrading your websites are many the 8 eight reasons pointed out by you is really worth following to get more visibility and traffic.These days I am doing it on my existing posts with lot of things happening in and around the world after it is published.
    I am sure this will give great attention to the new visitors or readers who missed to read earlier.

    Thanks for this timely alert to the bloggers here. Keep sharing. Best Regards,

    Philip

  2. Hiten Patel07:31pm,

    I also suggest getting a DOT CA (.ca) domain.

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published.

Required Required Required