As a website owner, you already know that it is important to keep your web content updated. Search engines, such as Google and Yahoo, frequently crawl the Internet and highlight newly updated websites. However, you may not know that it is also important to frequently update the structure, to add functionalities, to improve the styles, and to redesign the website completely. Fox Web Creations has listed five great reasons for you to redesign your website for the coming year.
Better Performance
As your website becomes popular, hundreds of visitors connect to your website at every second. If your web server is not powerful enough, it might not be able to provide responsive web pages for each visitor. Instead of changing hosting plans that can be expensive, an alternative is to redesign the website to make it more lightweight. For example, the web pages can be rewritten with another programming language; redundant content can be removed, or the databases can be managed with more efficient software. All these changes require a redesign. It might be time costly, but you will save the money you would have spent on upgrading your hosting plan. Also, Google and other search engines will rank a website that loads faster higher than a slow website.
New Functionality
One great way to attract visitors and guide them through your website is to add new functionalities. For example, many websites nowadays are embedding search engines, so that the visitors can search within the website. Some websites have social media ports to attract users from Facebook or Twitter. Many consulting websites provide Q&A interfaces so that visitors can chat with a consultant online. Here’s the bottom line: Adding new functionalities helps engage additional visitors and attract new business opportunities. A new website design makes it possible to add these useful functionalities seamlessly with the latest style and smooth operation instead of as a clunky afterthought.
Style Trends
Trending and responsive web designs give visitors the impression that your website is up-to-date, well maintained and informative. Changing the web page styles does not necessarily require redesign. For instance, small changes in colors or shapes could easily be done by modifying the styling scripts. However, if you want to adapt to a trending, interactive, user-friendly and responsive web design, a redesign might be a better option. For example, new scripting languages such as Node.js, AngulaJS, and JQuery provide fancy visual effects, enabling visitors to interact with otherwise static texts and pictures. To equip your website with such new techniques, it would be more efficient to redesign the site from scratch rather than doing a huge code redesign.
Mobile Interface
According to statistics, half of the Internet browsing traffic is now from mobile devices. Today, many websites provide a mobile version of the web pages. However, since these web pages were initially designed for desktop browsers, their mobile versions are often slow and not mobile friendly. A standalone mobile version of the whole website would be more elegant and more responsive. Such a redesign gives your mobile visitors a better user experience. Google and other search engines will rank higher a website that is responsive to smartphones and tablets than a website that is not.
Tax Implications
Finally, in addition to the many benefits of bringing in additional business and improving your professional presence on the web, you can also write off much of the cost of redesigning your website as a business expense. Depending on the cost and complexity of your website there will be a few different possible processes to go through. For example, if your website includes extensive programming to make it functional, it can be classified as ‘software’ and amortized over a period of three years. Alternatively, if your site is a simple landing page to advertise your product, it may simply be written off as an advertising expense the year that you have it made. Please consult with your accountant or a tax adviser for more information on your specific situation.
In general, better performance, new functionalities, social media, style trends and mobile interfaces are all good reasons to redesign your website and improve your business for 2016, not to mention the fiscal benefit of the tax write-off. If you are interested in such a redesign, contact us at Fox Web Creations.
