Your website is one of the most important elements of your business. It’s often the first impression people get of your company, and if you offer online ordering, then your website can make or break your business. However, like fashion, web design is ever evolving, and if you don’t keep up with the competition, you risk having a website that’s dated and difficult to use. Here are some changes you should consider making to your website in 2020.

1. Remove dated designs

There are a number of things that can make your website look dated, from using a mis-mash of color and fonts, to animated gifs and broken images. Unless you want to give your website visitors some serious early-00’s nostalgia, you should stick to simple, sleek designs that look modern and clean. If you have just built your website on a template and are worried that it looks unprofessional, consider investing in a web designer to bring it up to scratch.

2. Optimize for mobile

People are increasingly using their mobiles to make searches, and if your site is optimized for mobile, you’ll be ranked higher in Google search results and are less likely to have people getting impatient and leaving. If you’re not sure whether your site is optimized for mobile, simply visit it on your phone and see if it fits nicely on your screen. Take note of loading times, if it’s more than a few seconds, your bounce rate is likely to be high, which means people leave after viewing only one page.

3. Update your content

If your content is looking a bit old and stale, then make it a new year’s resolution to give it a refresh. Many business websites have content that’s evergreen, so it probably won’t need a complete rewrite or reshoot but updating it for 2020 will ensure it’s relevant and doesn’t contain any errors. You may even feel inspired to go for a complete overhaul, perhaps looking for web design Birmingham services so you can get a new look for the new decade.

4. Work on your user experience

If your sales or enquiry numbers aren’t where you’d like them to be, you may want to check that users are having a good experience on your site. You may well have heard of UX, which is short for user experience, and it’s a way of making sure people get the best possible experience when they use your site. Techniques such as sales funnels can guide people through your site, meaning you increase the chances of getting a conversion, whether it’s a sale or signing up for your newsletter.

5. Make it SEO-friendly

There’s a lot of talk about whether SEO is still relevant in 2020, and while the way people search is changing, SEO is still important and tends to get better results than paid methods. If your SEO strategy is based around desktop searches, make sure you pay attention to local SEO and optimizing for voice search, both areas that are likely to grow in the next decade.