5 Ways An Outdated Website Will Harm Your Business

1. Customers Might Think That You Just Don’t Care

Websites are a key way to send a message to your online customers. Do you have a modern, constantly evolving website with loads of helpful info and features? You’ll probably send the message of being a caring, thoughtful, customer-orientated business.

However, if you leave your website for too long, don’t add any new content and don’t update its design to keep up with current trends, you’ll unfortunately send a message of the exact opposite. Customers will likely see you as a business who don’t care enough to keep their content fresh and who don’t care enough to give their customers the best user experience. That is certainly not an impression you want to leave on your customer base!

Keep your customers’ impressions positive by showing them that you care about their experience. Make sure that your website is easy to use, aesthetically pleasing and loads quickly after every click.

2. It Will Make Your Business Seem As Though It’s “Stuck In The Past”

Similar to the previous point, your website will give customers a lasting impression of your business, one that you’ll want to be good of course. That is where your website’s design could shape your customers’ entire view of your business.

An old website that looks like it was from 2010 (and might well be if you haven’t changed it!), will make your customers think of your business as old. Today, a website is often the very first time that someone will “see” your business, hence why it’s so crucial to make this a positive experience. If it’s poor, looks outdated and hardly works, people are going to assume the same for your entire business operation.

If you want to maintain an engaged customer base, who enjoy returning to your website and business, you must make sure that your website is up to date, modern and works seamlessly. This includes having design, layout, functionality, speed and responsiveness all improved to make for the ultimate user experience.

4. It May Harm The Quality Of Your Products/Services

Another major issue that stems from having an old, poorly functioning website is that you may affect how your services or products come across to customers. If your site uses old descriptions that are no longer relevant, or old and poor-quality images then it shows what you offer in a poor light.

Even if it’s not actually the case, and what you offer is of a high quality and standard, the way you show this to customers is crucial. They want to see high quality product images, relevant descriptions that help them decide, and an easy experience when browsing through your catalogue.

Take a look at the images above as an example; the left one is a higher quality image that is readable and allows you to get a good idea of the products. The image on the right is pixelated and doesn’t allow you to read the bottles, or get an idea for what they are, or really how nice they could look. Both of these images are the same size and take the same time to load, yet one will provide infinitely more value to your customers!

5. You’ll Lose The Trust Of Your Customers

Over 75% of all web users say that they judge the credibility of your business purely on the design of its website. That means that the vast majority of customers are going to decide whether or not they trust shopping or working with you, just based on their first impressions of your website.

What makes this even more important for businesses to focus on, is that 40% of users say that they’ll never return to website or business if they dislike the design, or they found it to be difficult to use and outdated. Your old website could be driving away huge portions of your potential customers, which could have long lasting implications on your business’s success.