How to Know When to Redesign Your Website

A-desk-with-a-monitor-and-a-laptop

Determining when to redesign your website is a common yet challenging business decision. On one hand, your website is often your most important marketing tool. An effective website can make a dramatic impact on your bottom line. On the other hand, redesigning your website requires significant time, effort, and resources. 

At Green Apple, we’ve had the opportunity to help dozens of clients redesign their websites over the years — a few of which have gone through multiple iterations. We want to help our clients make informed decisions on whether they should invest in a website redesign. We also want to help them avoid the mistakes businesses make when launching a new website. Sometimes they decide it’s time to redesign the entire site. In other cases, we help them identify small tweaks and improvements they can make.

How to Know When to Redesign Your Website

Beyond obvious factors such as security concerns or outdated functionality, here are a few questions we ask to help our clients navigate the decision to redesign their website:

1. What do the metrics say?

Google analytics and marketing metrics can play a helpful role in helping you determine the current state of your website. 

For example, If your website has a high bounce rate, you should conduct further investigation to see if the issue is based on slow page load speed, bad or unclear content, or a poor user experience.

Your conversion rate can help you determine if your website is doing its job of converting visitors into potential customers.  Websites that have a hard time generating leads and conversions are typically missing key elements that help with the conversion process.

2. How is the mobile experience?

In today’s digital-first age, mobile marketing is an essential tactic for every business. The majority of web traffic nowadays is conducted on mobile devices. Your website should be “mobile responsive” and also easy to navigate on a phone. If you have received numerous complaints about the mobile optimization of your site, it might be a good idea to get ahead of the issue by redesigning your website.

3. Does your website reflect the way you currently talk about your business?

Most businesses adapt the way they do business in order to keep up with the changing demands of their customers. For some, the way they talk about their business changes as they discover new messaging that resonates with their audience. It’s important that your website matches the way your leadership and sales team talks about your products or services. This is key to creating a cohesive user experience. 

4. How easy is it for people to quickly understand what you do and take the first step?

The ultimate goal of every website is to support business development. That’s why it’s essential to make sure your website is easy to navigate and understand. Having a disconnect at any level of a user’s journey can lead to confusion and frustration.

How do you provide a great experience? Make sure your website is easy to navigate, your content is easy and enjoyable to read, and you have clear calls to action.

5. Are you being outranked by competitors on important key search phrases?

Designing an SEO-friendly website is a foundational element for your marketing efforts. SEO is crucial because it makes your website more visible to searchers, and that means more traffic and more opportunities to convert prospects into customers. 

One way to determine if you’re maximizing your SEO efforts is to conduct keyword research to see how you compare with other competitors in your industry. If your website is struggling to rank for important keywords, it’s likely that your website is not built in accordance with new search engine algorithms and needs to be redesigned.

Failing to keep your website updated can waste marketing resources, lose out on sales, or hurt your brand reputation. 

If you’re just looking for a website redesign, Green Apple might not be the best fit. But if you want to ensure your website is aligned with your overall marketing strategy and actively helping you grow your business, we’d love to talk. Through a comprehensive audit of your website, we can discover opportunities to improve your website so that it reaches your audience. Contact our team today.

5 Ways to Craft an Unforgettable Customer Experience

a Neon heart


Let’s face it—everything comes down to customer experience. 

Whether it’s a first-time visitor to a loyal patron, customers will remember how they felt when working with your business—good or bad. To help you build an unforgettable experience for your customers, we have five tips to help design your strategy.

Crafting an Unforgettable Customer Experience

1. Curate your online presence to be easy and unforgettable.

Your customer experience begins the moment a potential customer searches for—or stumbles upon—your business online. Make that moment count. Ensure that your website is easy to find, using SEO best practices, and that it answers the customer’s every question as soon as they see it.

Google My Business is an excellent, free tool that will help you make your business information front-and-center on Google. A person will be able to find your website, hours, FAQs, directions, and more. 

Once your customer lands on your website, you can continue answering the more detailed questions. What is your mission? What makes you different? What services or products do you offer?

Top off your information with impeccable website design. Work with a designer, if you’re able, or do a great deal of research to put your best foot forward. Make your potential-customer curious enough to continue to engage with your business.

2. Write genuine content that speaks to your audience without selling.

At the center of your brand’s universe is your content. It expresses your voice and builds a connection with your audience—while giving you the chance to shape your customer’s perception of your business.

Make your writing clear, but infuse your voice as much as possible to create a genuine connection. Many businesses will hide behind their words, telling customers what they think they want to hear. Today’s customer will gravitate toward the real feelings, not the sales speak.

3. Test your own user experience and remove any friction you find.

The best way to assess your current customer experience is to test it out yourself. Pretend you’re a customer (or designate a teammate or friend) and go through the process from start to finish—search for key terms related to your business (e.g., real estate company near me), check out your website, complete a contact form.

At every step, ask yourself, If I were looking for a product or service like this, what might prevent me from using this one? When you identify the answer(s) to that question, use those as opportunities to fine-tune your process. Remove any friction that a customer may experience when trying to find you, engage with you, or maintain a relationship with you.

4. Empower your team to make your customers happy.

Every person on your team from the top to the bottom has the power to affect your customers’ experience. When you empower your team to make your customer happy, they can identify opportunities that you may not see to go the extra mile. It’s those small moments that can turn a first-time customer into a patron.

Tip: Create an internal marketing strategy to help your team feel invested while also being able to talk about your company to others effectively.

5. Add “happys” throughout your process to make it memorable.

At Green Apple, you’ll often hear us call something a “happy.” It can describe a joyful event in our lives (a weekend happy, for example) or a gift. While it can take on several meanings, a happy is essentially something that brings you joy.

As you test your process, identify areas where you can add elements to spark that same joy in your customers. It can be as simple as a personal email to show your appreciation, or something larger, such as a gift. Whatever you choose, make it an opportunity for your customer to remember your brand fondly.

Are you ready to craft an unforgettable experience for your customer? Contact Green Apple Strategy to get started.