It’s Refresh Time. Here’s How to Update a Website [+ My Pro Tips]

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Learning how to update a website is vital for having fresh and relevant content, including an appealing website design.

Here at HubSpot, we've already refreshed our homepage three times in 2024. This ties into a 2024 survey of 145 companies that I was looking at, which revealed some interesting statistics about companies that update their website:

• Over 20% made minor updates to their site in the last year.
• 49% did a complete redesign in the previous two years.
• About 20% did a complete redesign in the previous 3-4 years.

The takeaway: If you're not updating your website regularly, you might miss out on the benefits.

In this article, I'll explain why frequent updates matter and share expert tips for successful website upgrades.

Table of Contents

• How to Update a Website
• Why Should I Update My Website?
• When Should I Update My Website?

Why Should I Update My Website?

Updating your website, especially if its current performance is satisfactory, might feel like a waste of resources. But as Princess Shuri said in Marvel's 2018 movie Black Panther, "Just because something works doesn't mean it can't be improved."

One vital reason to improve your website is to boost its performance. Many marketers wait until traffic and lead volume decline before upgrading their websites. Don't be like that.

Traffic brings leads. Leads become customers. And without fresh content and a visually appealing design, your traffic will go to competitors. If competitors regularly update their websites, you risk losing revenue opportunities because of a stale site. That's why I recommend setting yourself up for growth by proactively updating your site content and design.

Pro tip: It's also a good idea to track changes so you can evaluate your website content's KPIs.

When Should I Update My Website?

During a Product or Brand Re-Positioning

As a business grows, your company's positioning and products may evolve. An outdated website can misrepresent your business, leaving customers with an inaccurate view of your offer.

Refreshing your site - particularly your homepage - can help align your messaging with your current position. This alignment helps reframe how existing customers see you and gives new visitors an up-to-date picture of your brand.

For example, I knew Wynter initially positioned itself as a message-testing tool. Below is a screenshot of the homepage from June 2023.

The product's capability has grown, and now it positions itself as a market research platform, thus prompting an update of its homepage.

Pre and Post-Launch of a New Offering

Your website is ideal for highlighting what's new in your business. Whether it's a new product, feature, or pricing update, refreshing your site keeps both new and returning visitors informed of the latest developments.

For example, HubSpot launched its AI chatbot and AI content repurposing software (Content Remix) in July 2024. To draw attention to both products, HubSpot updated its homepage.

For comparison, here's how the homepage looked in April 2024.

When Capitalizing on Trends

It's common for brands to jump on viral social media trends to boost social reach. However, I like how Zappos did something less common: they took advantage of the viral "very demure" TikTok trend to drive engagement on their site.

For the unfamiliar, the "very demure" trend emerged from a satirical TikTok video by content creator Jools Lebron. What Zappos did was add a navigation bar to their site that read "Very Demure. Shop The trend." The bar also included a link to a dedicated landing page showcasing select clothing items aligned with the trend.

How to Update a Website

1. Evaluate your current website performance.

Start by auditing your website's design and performance to create an upgrade plan. Assess if your site appears modern and compares well with competitors. Review key metrics like bounce rate, loading time, session length, mobile responsiveness, and conversion rate to pinpoint areas for improvement.

Do a user journey audit, too. GrowthWaves, a B2B newsletter I'm subscribed to, observed that prospects were abandoning their onboarding process before validating their emails and paying. This led to lost revenue, causing GrowthWaves to implement a follow-up process that prompts users to complete their sign-up.

This example highlights the importance of reviewing and optimizing critical user interactions on your site to boost performance and maximize revenue.

2. Focus on the most important aspects of the update.

According to Databox's study, time constraint is the second most common reason businesses don't update their site. One way to scale this hurdle is to focus on high-impact areas first. This includes your homepage, landing pages, and pricing pages.

I like that the team at Chameleon, a production adoption platform, understands this point well. Using Hotjar, a website heatmap and behavior analytics tool, they discovered 50% of their website visitors checked only the above-the-fold area of their homepage.

While some marketers might revamp the entire homepage copy to keep visitors' attention and get them into scrolling the page, Chameleon didn't do that. Instead, they focused on making the top section of the page as engaging as possible.

After several iterations, this area evolved from a header with a GIF showcasing a brief product demo to an interactive demo. The result? A 250% jump in conversions of the new homepage.

The GIF below will help you appreciate the demo better - it's an interactive, carousel-type product demo that properly showcased their main products: Tours, Tooltips, Surveys, Launchers, and HelpBar.

Chameleon also added a smart personalization element. When visitors land on their homepage, the interactive demo features the visitor's company name, logo, and brand colors.

3. Run frequent small experiments.

Chameleon's success stems from insights gained from previous experiments. Kirsty Finlayson, Chameleon's director of product marketing and content, noted they had tested website personalization, such as showing tailored case studies or highlighting relevant integrations based on a visitor's tech stack.

These changes led to a 400% increase in conversions, causing Kristy to recognize the correlation between personalization and conversion rates. This knowledge prompted the inclusion of personalization in their demo.

The lesson? You don't have to do a full website redesign to boost performance. As Andy Crestodina suggests, full website redesigns may occur every 3-4 years for tech and design companies, and 4-5 years for other companies. But frequent, minor updates and experiments are crucial to improving conversion rates continuously.

4. Test your messaging.

Anecdotal evidence shows a lack of clear messaging annoys buyers (like me!) and causes them to leave a website.

Image Source

Does your website clearly communicate what you do? Don't be so quick to answer. I'd recommend your audience to be the judge. Positioning expert April Dunford suggests observing sales calls with new prospects and noting how long it takes your message to resonate. If there's confusion early on, it's a sign your messaging is unclear.

You can also use tools like Wynter to gather feedback from your ideal customer profiles (ICPs) and improve your messaging. Also, run A/B tests to determine which calls-to-action (CTAs), messaging, and colors drive the most conversions.

5. Revisit your SEO strategy.

Start by asking, "Are we meeting our SEO content marketing goals?" If so, audit your site to identify pages that need content updates.

I recommend prioritizing:

• High-traffic pages published over 12 months ago. Regularly refreshing this content lets you maintain your ranking in search results.
• High-potential pages that do not rank for target keywords. Identify these pages by using tools like Ahrefs and Semrush.

Also, check for technical SEO issues like indexability, crawlability, and broken links.

If you're not hitting your goals, assess your content strategy to find the root cause. Upon working with Belkins, a B2B lead generation company, I found they faced a similar challenge. They aimed to attract high-quality leads and convert them into appointments. However, their content generated traffic without leads.

They fix this in two phases. First, they deleted all pages with low potential. Second, they updated their content and published more pieces that aligned with their goals.

Recommended Reading: How to Revive an Old Blog Article for SEO

6. Evaluate competitor sites.

Don't copy your competitors, but be aware of them. Their sites can offer valuable insights on what to do or avoid. Also, gather inspiration from outside your industry. For example, I noticed many SaaS brands now feature demos on their homepages, like Chameleon (which I showed earlier) and Speechify.

Upon researching, I discovered this is a growing trend. According to Navattic's 2024 State of the Interactive Product Demo Report, interactive demos have increased in popularity by nearly 90% since 2022.

These demos allow visitors to engage with your product quickly without creating an account. If you're a product-led company, consider adding an interactive demo to your website.

7. Conduct UX research.

Perform UX research to pinpoint design friction in areas like navigation and accessibility. User survey results can highlight which elements to prioritize during a website upgrade. For instance, CXL, an e-learning platform, used surveys to uncover four major customer complaints about its UX.

In a recent email newsletter, they shared their experiments to address these concerns. One finding was that learners wanted to resume courses from where they left off. So, CXL hypothesized that adding a "last visited/viewed courses" section as the first dashboard content block would reduce clicks and improve the user experience.

Users responded positively to the update but also requested more precise indicators for where they left off during their last visit. Additionally, they observed that merely viewing a course adds it to the active course section, so the team needed to find a way to exclude courses that were only explored but not started.

Feedback like this helps the team identify what to focus on next.

8. Don't trivialize design.

I alluded to this earlier, but it's worth reemphasizing the importance of good design because I still see many poorly designed websites out there.

Unbounce's study of 37,000 landing pages across 16 industries found copy has twice the impact on conversions as design. However, design still plays a crucial role. According to Gitte Lindgaard, visitors form an opinion about your site in about 0.05 seconds.

This means design matters most for a good first impression and pulling users in. So invest in good design. Pay attention to web design trends and web design best practices to create a distinct site.

Pro tip: If you need inspiration, you can download our free workbook on planning a successful website redesign. It contains guidance and templates to simplify your next website redesign project.

9. Review your site security.

According to the 2023 Hiscox report, one in eight attacked businesses suffered costs of $250,000 or more, with small firms getting hit harder.

But financial loss isn't the only risk here: stolen customer data and funds can seriously harm your brand's credibility. To safeguard your site, conduct regular vulnerability assessments.

Key tips for securing your website include:

• Installing an SSL certificate.
• Keeping your CMS and plugins up to date.
• Automating regular backups so you can quickly recover in case of a breach.

Pro tip: Learn more about protecting your customer data by downloading our free checklist created in partnership with Sophos, a British security software and hardware company.

Your Turn for a Website Upgrade

Updating your website is an ongoing process. Doing it consistently helps you stay competitive. Whether it's minor updates like optimizing your homepage or bigger updates like refreshing old content and adding interactive elements - these website upgrades can deliver significant results.

Now that I've armed you with these insights, here's a plan of action: audit your site, implement some small experiments, and then make consistent improvements to keep your website ahead.

Topics:Website Design

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