[UGANDA] 7 Reasons your website needs A Re-Designe

So you have a company in Uganda, and already have a website designed, good for you but, it’s not just about “having it already”.  A website is a 24-7 sales person; a representation of your brand online and can be a great marketing tool for your business as it puts you and your business in the eyes of hundreds of thousands of potential Ugandan customers, especially in Kampala.

With that in mind, you understand that you got to have it achieve your primary goals and purpose.
Unless your company has nothing to do with selling, we think a website should be used primarily for selling. That’s what every business is all about, right? So let’s understand that we are designing for awareness, great looks as well the user experience, but our at-most desire is to have your website sell for you.
In this article, we’ll take a look at 7 signs that call for a redesign of your website if you have already, and to consider for coming soon website designs.

1.  Your website looks and feels outdated.

Don’t listen to any one that says “It’s just about being online, like I said, your website is a 24-7 sales person and a representation of your brand online as well a great marketing tool your business.

Any one that knows about marketing, also knows that first impressions last forever, your business website not exclusive to that too. It can be accessed anywhere in the world and what you want is to convert your visitors into customers, and that doesn’t just happen with an outdated website, your website has got to be fresh, nice looking and modern in all ways to you as well as your visitors. -If you don’t find your website pleasant to look at, chances are that your visitors feel the same way.

2. Your website has an amateur’s design.

Some Companies out there are like -It’s just a website; Call our IT Department. And they ignore professionalism. I have seen this so much especially in Uganda as the boss looks to save the budget. while this may save you some money short term, your website will most likely not reflect your brand in terms of quality and may impact your results too.

• If your company also went with the cheapest proposal on the table, you are most likely a victim of a poor website design.

• If your website designer has no portfolio (Previous work to show), you also may as well have a bad website design

3. Your website is not mobile-friendly.

Also Known as “Responsive Design”, Mobile friendliness contributes a lot to the quality and usability of your website.
What Responsive means is basically that your website has a different and most desirable design for different devices by their respective screen sizes.
As mobile usage continues to grow (Over 75% of internet traffic), it is becoming more and more important to have your website looking and feeling great on all device types –Smartphones, Tablets, Laptops, Desktops etc.

4. Your website takes a long time to load.

You don’t want your site taking too long to display useful information that you want your visitors to see, no one likes a slow website. A Slow website not only switch your visitor’s mood off; it also makes them never want to return again, -ever.
A high load time also takes the attention of search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo away from your website as they don’t like sending people to your slow website.
This is mostly a hosting issue if not heavy code. There are several ways of optimizing for speed and we always try to make all our websites load faster.

5. Your website has no Backend.

A Content Management System (CMS) is a web design term used to describe a functionality that allows a website owner to easily add, change, and update almost anything on their website with no need for coding skills or help from a skilled developer.
We do this for each and every Ugandan website we build and try as much to see no static websites in all our designs.
Your website doesn’t have one? trust me when I say you don’t deserve the pain you’re going through. You need a website that allows you change things around like you want them -timely.

6. Your website does not represent your company anymore.

We talked about this in the previous point, you need a system behind your website, a one that enables you to update your company information as the business grows over the years.
This may be adding new services or products you offer, editing the ones you changed in design or pricing, updating or removing the ones you don’t offer any more (Out of stock), among others.
If your website contains information that is not up-to-date or missing key information you want visitors to access, your website doesn’t make sense to your company any more.

7. Usability

Finally; It all comes down to usability. In our previous articles “12 Reasons we should Design Your Website” and “5 Qualities of a good website design”, I emphasized much about this and I am yet to say a little more today.
Usability is all the look and feel, mobile friendliness, navigation for both humans and Search engines among others. You need to have your website easily usable and that’s how people will stay logger on your website hence more business for you as people and search engines get to understand what you are and offer.

Below are some signs your website has a poor usability score;

• Your website is difficult to navigate and has confusing or no menu at all.

• Your website doesn’t engage your visitors with clear calls to actions to boost sales.

• Your site structure does not cater for Search engines.

• Your website is not mobile friendly.

• Your website takes forever to load most times.

Among others, usability is too extensive and important to your website design

BONUS;

Your Website doesn’t have Social media integrated.

If you are on the internet, you most likely also have a Facebook or at least a twitter handle, your business has got to have these too.
Social media is now a vital tool to have for marketing an PR purposes. When a visitor comes, then leaves your website, that parson may never come back, but if they found a way to like, follow or subscribe to you on social media platforms and they did, you have a greater chance of getting to them through these platforms any time.
It’s only a good strategy to have your website integrate with social media, and you’d be missing out not to.

Conclusion;
Having a Professional, Modern and Mobile friendly website will go a long way to make your website a great online marketing tool for you and your business, don’t ignore reliability, load time and any other qualities of a good website design as they also contribute a great deal to a good quality score.

As always, we are professional Website Developers and would love to hear your story and and we’ll advise accordingly.