It's been a rainy week here in Portland, Maine, so what do we do to lift our spirits...? We have a fun group message thread to chat about all the ways you can tell a website is outdated. When we were searching online for similar lists we found that we actually had come up with the ultimate list of signs that you might have an outdated website. Even though some of these signs we rarely see anymore, some we actually do. Plus, all joking aside, a website that doesn't appear modern does not leave a good first impression or a lasting impression with your audience. So please, take the time to read our list of signs and symptoms of outdated websites and use this list to ask yourself:
"Is My Website Outdated?"
Your website might be outdated if you can find any of the following:
- There is a home button
- Your users can sing the entire alphabet while before the website loads
- The title tag on your home page says “Home” and your business name
- The website does not use an SSL Certificate
- The website is not on a responsive platform
- You have distasteful clip art and animated gifs
- The last blog you posted was when President Obama was in office
- The font on your site is Comic Sans
- There are a massive amount of spammy links at the bottom of your website or in the sitemap
- There is a “hit counter” on your home page
- The website is still using Flash
- The website is on a discontinued platform/CMS
- There is a “Links” page on your website
- The site is built with tables
- Your users are navigating to 404 pages (broken pages)
- The website is using m.website.com or mobile.website.com or website.com/mobile to serve up the mobile version
- There is a blog post on your website that starts with… “It always intrigues me why the Star Trek® shows have such great, sexy costumes. Body hugging fabrics are the ultimate in showing off a great…”
- The website is not ADA compliant
- There is a Guestbook on your site
- To get in touch with your business you serve up plain text emails versus employing a user-friendly contact form
- The website advertises GoDaddy.com
- The copyright date says 2007
- All of the anchor text is Click Here
- There are “Back to top” links on the bottom of the webpages
- The website has custom cursors
- The landing pages are jpeg photocopies of brochures
- All the CTAs (Calls to Action) say “Learn More”
- The website uses text flattened into images
- All of the metadata uses caps lock text
If you discovered some of these items on your website, don't worry, it doesn't necessarily mean you need a complete website redesign. You might just need to update certain parts of it. Not sure what you need to get your website up to 2018 (face it, that's where we are headed real soon!) standards? Contact us using the link below, we'd love to chat about how to improve your business website.
Final Shoutouts
Thank you for my team for the five minutes of giggles, brightening up this rainy week, and helping me create this (hopefully) helpful blog post. You guys are the best ever!