Our Blog

7 Tell-tale Signs your Website is Obsolete

As a business owner, webmaster or marketing executive you know that a great looking website is essential to making a strong and memorable first impression.  An old or obsolete website design is not only embarrassing, it drives away prospective customers.

How do you know whether your website is obsolete? We polled our colleagues and network of professional website designers to come up with the top tell-tale signs.

If you answer YES to any of the following questions – your website is stuck in the past and needs revamping:

1. Displays badly across different devices? – Do your customers have to scroll sideways to read your content on their smart phone or iPad? Do you know how annoying that is to your customers?  Don’t be in denial that mobile devices account for most website traffic these days – make your website responsive and have it work well across all devices.
2. Do you have a splash page? – Customers like websites to be fast and zippy with all the information they need right there in front of them. Splash pages with your logo or ‘press to enter’ buttons can be annoying, unnecessary and make you look stuck in the past – avoid them.
3. Website built in Flash? – You might like a big Flash animated introduction to your website but your customers and search engines don’t:
   • They take too long to load.
   • Web crawlers cannot read them.
   • They do not display on mobile devices unless a Flash player is installed.
4. Are your web page sizes too small? –  Websites used to be designed to fit small monitors – but with all the new larger flat screens available – your old website will look quaint, miniature and out-dated.  Get it updated to use the available screen space available with newer screens.
5. Does your website load slowly? – A good sign of this is that images load piece meal or it takes longer than 3 seconds for the page to load. People are busy and don’t have time waiting for your web pages to load. Improve this or visitors will spend the waiting time reading your competitor sites.
6. Do you have auto-play music? – This has to be one of the most irritating things on websites and it is very effective in driving people away. It is so annoying that there is even a webpage that shows viewers how to disable them!
7. Do you have a hit counter? – Having a counter that shows the number of visitors to your site is a sure sign that your website needs updating!

Answering YES to any of the above will mean that potential customers will see your site as old and obsolete – things they will infer onto your business. It is time to review your website design and get professional help to get you up-to-date with the latest technologies that can help you grow your business.

Give us a call at +61 2 8206 9569 or email us if you have any questions or want to discuss how you can get rid of these tell-tale signs of an obsolete website.

• Comments (0)
• Trackbacks (0)
• Permalink

Megan Kerr

Meg is a Project Manager/Producer at Cornerstone with a special interest in conversion rate optimisation. She has a business analysis background and thinks the web would be a better place if everyone looked at their web statistics daily.