These are 10 signs of an outdated or aging website. If you check any one of them after looking at your website, you should consider making some changes and adjustments to your website immediately.
1. Your website is left aligned to the browser window.
The website should be centered in the browser window. There are some cases where left aligned websites can be visually pleasing, but in most, it leaves a lot of blank space on the right that is not very visually appealing.
2. Your website only takes 1/3 of the screen.
With recent progress in technology and affordability of computer monitors, the screen resolutions within last 2 years have increased. In 2009, average computer was sold with a 17” monitor that was set to 1024×768 resolution. Today, most computers are being sold with a 19”+ monitor size, and even though some devices such as netbooks and tablets have smaller monitors, their resolution is still set higher than those 17” monitors 2 years ago.
Use that space on your website for content and visual aids, after all, you’ve paid for the website, so make sure that you are utilizing it to it’s fullest (in this case, widest) extent.
3. The copyright notice at the bottom of your website is older than my two year old daughter.
Keep updating the date on the bottom of your website (unless you don’t have it). This is one of the things that your website users check in order to ensure that the website and website content is current. There are many ways to set the date to auto update, and it’s not that difficult to do it manually as well.
4. Your website still has a visible visitor tracker.
Really? Nobody cares. Great tools such as Google Analytics were created for a reason. Use them and keep the user information to yourself, unless you are running a social networking website or a website that offers advertisement on it, and even than, you should not have the “visitor ticker” on your home page.
5. Your website has a fancy splash page.
Ok, for large global companies a splash page can still be useful, but not so much so for a local business owner. The website user will not sit there and watch some fancy animation to be loaded in order to proceed to your website, the attention span on the Internet is definitely decreasing, so don’t make them wait. Even if you have the “skip the intro” button – don’t make your visitor click one extra time.
6. Your website’s content is not current.
If you are getting phone calls inquiring about services that you no longer offer, it’s a clear sign to remove those from your website’s list of services, and browse through the entire content to make sure that its’ still relevant to your business.
7. Your website looks weird on some browsers.
New browsers and new versions are entering the market very rapidly and at times are very difficult to keep up with. Contact your website designer and developer to check for browser compatibility and have them make all appropriate changes to ensure a smooth experience for your website visitor.
8. Your website still uses dirty old SEO tricks.
Hidden text, paragraphs and paragraphs of keywords on the bottom of every page, hundreds of keywords in your header? Google and other search engines have a name for that – SPAM. Search engines are extremely intuitive and it’s very difficult to trick them, so I would suggest doing things the right way.
9. Your website is not mobile-friendly.
With all the mobile browsing and challenges between Adobe Flash and Apple products such as iPad, iPhone and iPod, your website needs to be optimized for those devices. They are becoming less alternative and more prominent in today’s market. Heavy use of scripts, pop-ups, rollovers and Flash is not going to fly.
10. Your website looks like it comes from the 90’s.
Your website’s look is just as important as the functionality and the content. You can have the best features and greatest content on your website, but if you can’t captivate your visitor to go pass your home page, what good is that great content doing you?
Fashion changes every year, fads come and go, new technology is introduced to the world almost daily – stay on top of it with your website look and design. After all, a first impression is a lasting impression.