When was the last time you made changes to your company’s website? If your website is more than a year old, you need to think about making some changes. Website design standards are constantly evolving, and website content can quickly get stale and out-of-date.

If your competitors have more modern-looking sites and fresher content, they will start drawing your customers away, and that is not good for you.

Signs That it’s Time to Overhaul Your Website

From years of experience in online marketing, here are some to look for.

Website is Old: Does your website look like all the other new websites out there? Or does it look like something that was designed five years ago? If your site doesn’t look new and fresh, it’s time to make it new and fresh. Any website more than three to five years old can can use a complete overhaul.

Website is Not Mobile-Friendly: More people today surf the web on their phones than on their computers. If your website doesn’t look good or work well on mobile devices, you need to fix that.

Website is Not Performing as it Used to: You know it is time to overhaul your website if traffic is down, online sales are down, leads are down, conversions are down, or your bounce rate is up. In other words, if your site isn’t performing like it used to, it may be because of an outdated design.

Benefits of Overhauling Your Website

What do you get if you invest in a website overhaul? There are lots of benefits, including:

• It will look better.
• It will work better.
• Your brand and company image will be improved.
• You will have a better mobile presence.
• You will see increased traffic, leads, conversions, and sales.

What makes a logo not just creative, but strong, successful, and lasting? How do you know when your logo isn't working the way it should? Even though you have invested in a logo design, is it what you wanted? Is it working the way you envisioned? What makes one concept potentially better than another? How do you narrow down your top choices in a logo redesign to a front-runner when different people are responding to different aesthetics?

Unfortunately, things change. Maybe what you once thought was a good logo for your business just doesn't work anymore. Maybe your business focus or customers have changed, maybe you have grown or changed markets. Maybe you have added services or changed your mission or merged with another business.

A new logo is a great way to earmark a new phase of the business. But where do you begin? Here are five tips to help you discern if a logo concept has what it takes to best represent your business.

1. Customer-Driven

Will the logo appeal to your target customers; both now and later? This is probably the biggest hurdle for most people to overcome. You are not your customer. Your "likes" are not necessarily theirs. So it is important to answer critical questions: Who are they? Does it speak to their interests or needs? Could it create confusion or be difficult to understand?

2. Uniqueness and Simplicity

Does it create a strong and distinct impression? Logos are about visibility in the clutter of the marketplace and being distinctly different from your competitors. Graphic designers deal in a systematic world of symbolism, form, typography, and color where it is nearly impossible to be "totally original", though they constantly try to develop new interpretations of meaningful ideas. It is more important to be different within your competitors (industry, category, or geographic region) than the logo universe as a whole.

Simplicity is one of the hardest things to achieve and requires the most work, which is the inverse of what most clients expect. Too tricky or too detailed and you risk losing your audience before they even get the message.

3. Credibility

Does it communicate your quality, expertise, and trustworthiness? People have automatic expectations and assumptions of certain types of businesses. You need to project something that is credible. Much of brand perception is about trust. If this logo is someone's first introduction to your company, does it inspire the trust you want? 

Credibility and relevancy vary quite a bit by industry. What might be totally acceptable for a hair salon might not play well for a bank, no matter how creative or nontraditional the bank's clientele.

4. Timelessness

Does your logo have a long shelf life? A good logo should have 10+ years of staying power; and many can last decades. The point is to have your new logo last as long as possible to maximize your investment.

For the sake of a longer shelf life, avoid logo trends that could easily look outdated in a few years. Aim for a timely and classic design, one that can grow with you. The idea is to create something timeless and inclusive enough that you can absorb minor shifts and delay a strategic overhaul until it is truly necessitated by either outside or inside forces.

Things change so fast in today's business environment that it is likely that some business aspect will change significantly in terms of your market, customer, or product long before the 10-year mark (even faster if you are in consumer or retail industries) which means you may need to adapt or redesign your logo and brand identity to be in sync on a more frequent basis.

5. Adaptability

How well can this concept be applied in a variety of technical applications? Will it work in black-and-white, as well as in color? How about screen-printing, embossing and sand-blasting? Can it scale up effectively to billboard size?

If it is difficult to adapt as-is to the full diversity of applications, are there logical ways to make special-usage adaptations of the logo that would work and still be consistent with the original? Is there a horizontal version (for web banners), a stacked version (for signage), or can one optimized version truly accommodate both?

New Logo Checklist

• Do you have a tag line? If so, would you like it stated alongside your logo?
• Do you have any specific imagery in mind for your logo?
• Do you have any color preferences, or existing brand colors?
• What adjectives should best describe your logo?
• What feeling or message do you want your logo to convey to those who view it?
• How do you prefer your logo to be worded or written out?
• How would you like the typography to appear?
• Where will you logo be used?

Font choice seems like a daunting task. There are millions of fonts available for your use. The hard part is not finding a font, but finding the right font. There are no simple rules about font choice, but there are a few tips to help you narrow down your choices.

1. Application

First, you must consider the intended use of the font. What is the primary purpose of the design? A font that looks great as initials in a logo may not work as well for text on a menu. Take your audience into account. Remember who will be viewing your font selection and adjust.

2. Legibility

The font's application leads to legibility. If you are using a font for article, choose a font with high readability. Your readers should be able to get through your text with ease. Some fonts are intended for headline use, and tend to be more decorative. These fonts can look great in small doses, but never as article. Make sure your font is at a legible size as well.

3. Contrast

If you are using two or more fonts, they must harmonize. Contrast is the key. Fonts with negligible differences do not usually complement each other. Look for striking but complimentary differences. Fonts have personalities just like people, so make sure they get along. Establish a dominant font and keep that dominance throughout your design.

4. Attitude

All fonts have attitudes and personalities just like people. Keep your audience in mind as you consider a font's attitude. What is your design trying to say? What do you want people to know after viewing it? What is your end goal? Find the answers to these questions and carry them out through font choice.

The foundation of every online marketing campaign is the website. Setting up a website is imperative in order to set in motion every other marketing strategy, whether it is an SEO strategy, a social media strategy, a content marketing strategy or more. However, companies that don’t have user friendly websites are going to fail right out of the gate.

1. Website Speed

User friendly websites don't necessarily have to exhibit incredible loading speeds, but they can't have slow loading speeds either. If it takes the website more than 4 or 5 seconds to load, the visitor will most likely hit the back button.

A slow website is a sure way to lose visitors almost immediately. Not only should the homepage load quickly, all other pages on the website should as well. The best way for a company to ensure that their websites load quickly is by making sure to get a good web host that offers plenty of bandwidth.

2. Website Layout

The website needs to be easy to read and to navigate. Many companies make the mistake of trying to make their website design flashy, which often slows down the speed of the site as well as making the visual design look way too cluttered and unprofessional.

Every page should be easily accessible as well. For example, if the visitor wants to purchase a product or service, then the e-commerce page should be easy to find and navigate. If it isn’t, the company could end up losing sales since visitors will simply leave without making a purchase. Many companies will implement a search function into their website in order to make it even easier for visitors to find what they are looking for.

3. Broken Links

There is nothing more frustrating for a visitor then clicking on a link that the company has provided on their website that doesn't work. Broken links are very unprofessional and make the website seem outdated.

Companies should go through their websites in order to check for broken links on a regular basis. Broken links not only frustrate visitors, they can also damage the website’s search ranking since Google's algorithm punishes websites with non-working links.

4. Mobile Friendly Pages

User friendly websites need to be mobile friendly as well. Just because the website is perfectly designed and loads quickly on a home computer does not mean that it will translate as such to a mobile device. Visitors don't want to be scrolling up, down, left and right through a website in an attempt to read the content.

5. Provide Contact Information

Companies that don't have their contact information clearly visible on their website are seriously hurting themselves. Visitors with questions about products, services or anything else, will want to contact the company somehow. Contact information should include a phone number, an email address and a physical address if one exists.