How Your Outdated Website is Hurting Your Business

Is Your Website Outdated? It is, when your website doesn’t work on mobile devices, or if the information hasn’t been updated in years. Research shows that it takes just 1/20th of a second for users to form an initial  impression of your business through your website  — much like you form an impression meeting a person for the first time.

As a website visitor yourself, when you land on an outdated website – you think to yourself:

  • Why are they not updating their website? Business must be slow.
  • They don’t seem to care about updating their website, maybe their services or products may not be as good. Are they still in business? 

Because of these assumptions, you’re not likely to engage this business and so you’ll seek another business instead. This business owner just lost a potential customer!

Don’t be that business owner. The impacts of an outdated website is hurting your business — and this could vary based on your industry. It hurts service-oriented businesses far more greatly than retail businesses. And why is that? Retail or restaurant businesses can engage social media platforms like Instagram or Facebook, through the use of imagery; while this could prove challenging for most service-oriented businesses.

What are the Impacts of an Outdated Website?

1. Your Reputation and Credibility becomes questionable

  • Customers place a higher value on businesses that are cutting edge and keeping abreast with the latest trends in their industry. 
  • So when your site visitors realize your website is outdated, they begin to judge your company and your services or products’ quality and reliability. They wonder how invested you are in bringing “quality” to your customers. Though this may not be true, you know you’re qualified and experienced in your field but that’s the perception that can quickly form in their minds. As a result, they will likely have second thoughts and abandon your site to check your competitors instead. 
  • You just lost a potential customer to your competition! 

2. Your Google rankings are Dropping

  • Google analyzes the content of websites to assess whether the pages contain information that might be relevant to what a site visitor is looking for. The most basic is when a web page contains the same keywords as the search query. Google then delivers a list of the best websites that will match that search query – a lot of competing websites.  
  • Google employs algorithms that rank websites and the two big ranking factors are:
    1. Mobile-friendliness – websites that are not mobile-friendly are penalized with lower rankings
    2. Updated website content – websites that are fresh and updated boosts Google rankings

3. Bad Reviews and Poor Customer Experience

  • A website with outdated information cause confusion to your prospects.  For example, a restaurant menu with outdated prices or services which you no longer offer or incorrect business hours — this creates a bad experience to your potential customers. 
  • And a bad experience may lead a frustrated customer to leave you a bad review in Google or Yelp or any one of those business listing sites. Once those bad reviews are posted on those sites, you can no longer remove them. 

Don't lose another customer!

Upgrade your website now.  A modern and mobile-friendly website benefits your business and helps build credibility.

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