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As an online business owner, ensuring your website is up to scratch is vital to attract customers. Having a slow, outdated website is equivalent to having a tired, dirty shop front on the high street. Website design is fast evolving, and a business website from four years ago can seem very dated now. This article will explore the benefits of having a regularly updated website for your online business. An updated website can help your business maximise profitability and reduce the number of visitors exiting without making any purchases.
Website Appearance
Modern consumers expect several things from a company website.
Consumers have high user experience expectations in the same way as visiting a retail store. For example, imagine you are Christmas shopping for your family and want a wide variety of gifts. You are more likely to enter the store with bright lights, warm Christmas music and a charming display in the window. Conversely, you are less likely to enter a dark, gloomy store with a dusty window display.
Let us explore three reasons why an updated website can benefit your UK online business.
1. Better Appearance Means More Sales
As mentioned above, customers will shop from smarter, more attractive websites.
Let us consider a physical retail store example of this. Waterstones tends to sell books at higher prices than supermarkets. Nevertheless, many people still prefer to buy books from Waterstones. This is because the shop specialises in books, displays books in a warm and attractive atmosphere and usually ensures there is a cafe where people can quietly read books.
The same is true of websites. Consumers will browse a website at length if it is easy and quick to use. An excellent example of this is Amazon.
They sell various goods, which could be a problem from a usability perspective. However, adding a search bar allows users to choose a ‘department’ to make it easy to find what they want. Updated websites can also utilise matching technology in which your website can suggest ‘similar’ items or services to what the consumer is viewing. This allows consumers to browse rival products as they would on a supermarket shelf.
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2. Updated Websites Are More Mobile Friendly
A 2021 survey estimated shoppers spent £20 billion on Christmas shopping through mobile devices (including phones and tablets). Other research articles predict that this figure will continue to rise. Moreover, we will soon reach a point where more online shopping occurs through mobile devices than computers.
It is, therefore, incredible that some websites still struggle to load or run properly on phones or tablets. Few people have the patience to use a website that needs pinching and endless scrolling or displays tiny text on a mobile device.
Instead, modern websites have builds tailored to display within the screen size of mobile devices. Some mobile websites show less text (due to the smaller screen size) and prioritise loading speeds over word count.
Any website that runs poorly on mobile devices immediately loses a decent number of potential sales and will do so increasingly.
3. Better Performance Equals Better Customer Service
Today, consumer expectations of website speed and performance are very high. Potential customers no longer tolerate slow websites. Thus, any website that takes over two seconds to load is likely to test an individual’s patience.
For example, Amazon may not be the most appealing website, but it is speedy, easy to read, and uses excellent search tools. These things are all essential to ensuring a fast website experience. Essentially, you want to ensure your website allows users to visit, search and purchase an item or service within five minutes.
Key Takeaways
An outdated website can lead to lost sales due to impatience with its speed or users preferring better-looking rival sites. In addition, it is helpful to update the content of your website, including critical legal documents such as terms of use or privacy policies. Many business owners aim to perform website updates periodically with the help of a web designer and lawyer. These changes can help the website remain fresh and accessible to potential customers.
If you need help getting relevant legal content in place for an updated website, our experienced ecommerce and online business lawyers can assist as part of our LegalVision membership. For a low monthly fee, you will have unlimited access to lawyers to answer your questions and draft and review your documents. Call us today on 0808 196 8584 or visit our membership page.
Frequently Asked Questions
Successful website redesigns can lead to more users returning to the site due to a positive consumer experience and more individuals finding the site through search engines. Search engines display popular sites at the top, so potential clients find websites with new content more easily.
Since consumers list website speed as one of the most critical factors of a modern website, slow websites irritate consumers. Furthermore, they may cause some users to query whether the site has crashed.
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