When’s the last time you updated your website? Not small content changes or swapping an image, but a larger overhaul and branding refresh.
The thought of refreshing a website is enough to keep most business owners up at night. After all, it probably took weeks and months to create the initial version. And when changes are made, things seem to break.
You may also be wondering—why should I care? My website works fine. It’s already generating leads and revenue. While this may be true, your website is a direct reflection of your brand, its products and services, and often a customer’s first impression of your business.
Here’s the deal…
Your website is the foundation for so many parts of your business. It builds brand awareness, provides support, educates customers, organizes your internal teams, and so much more.
And as trends change, so too does consumer behavior. 88% of online consumers say they won’t return to a website after a bad experience. With experiences in focus today, you can’t afford to deliver a poor user experience.
So, what options do you have? If you’re looking for speed, agility, and to meet best practices—an agency may be the best choice.
Internal Teams vs. the Agency: What’s Best?
Your initial thought is probably to just use some team members for this project. Your developer knows the site, your marketing intern knows a little bit about writing and graphic design, and they get the mission.
But your team members have other jobs to focus on. They need to keep creating value in other areas, and a lengthy website refresh could impact other parts of your business.
Working with an agency gives you access to a team of industry experts that understand how to design, implement, and optimize every stage of your website refresh. Remember, they do this stuff for a living. They also have teams of graphic and web designers, copywriters, web developers, and other creatives to make it a seamless process.
Agencies offer you a fresh perspective of your website, brand, and how you position yourselves in the market. This leads to fresh ideas and focusing on solving pain points that you might have overlooked. An outside agency can step back and view everything, providing an unbiased opinion and action plan based on proven marketing strategies.
Pain Point #1: Web Design Takes Too Long
One of the biggest benefits of hiring an outside agency is the speed and precision they offer. Their only focus is completing your website, which means everything they do should provide significant improvements to your website, brand, and marketing initiatives.
Agencies have strict processes in place to guide you through the ideation, design, and implementation stages. And best of all? These processes are based on industry best practices, meaning you get the best of the best.
Pain Point #2: Your Messaging Is Confusing
Anyone can write words, but it takes a talented professional to write persuasively.
The average consumer’s attention span is only 8 seconds. That’s 8 seconds to tell your story and convince them to keep reading.
That’s where copywriters come into the picture. A copywriters job is to keep your messaging on point. Every headline, paragraph, and word needs to communicate your business value.
Outside agencies have in-house copywriters that do this for a living. They aren’t casual writers being thrown into the fire—they are proven professionals that know what converts.
A website with conversion-driven copy is more likely to build brand awareness, educate customers, and convert leads.
Pain Point #3: Slowing Brand Growth
The main outcome of a website refresh is to modernize your website with a fresh design, persuasive copy, and a consistent user journey. All of these things play an important role in the customer journey, creating a seamless user experience.
It’s essential today to keep the focus on the customer journey, making it easier for your marketing teams to create marketing campaigns that are outcomes-focused.
An agency’s goal is to create a modern website that’s focused on growing your brand. This may include choosing a new content management system (CMS) to build the website on, updating key branding elements, optimizing the site’s structure, and other areas that aim to streamline the user experience.
Another key challenge is choosing between the various CMSs like WordPress, Wix, HubSpot, and others, especially if you aren’t familiar with the key differences. Agencies know which platforms are likely to work best for your business, and they can save you money when it comes to website fees and plugins.
Looking to Start Your Next Website Refresh?
Your website plays an important part in your marketing strategy. It’s also the first touchpoint customers usually have with your company, whether they find you through paid ads, organically, or through word of mouth.
Don’t let an outdated website hurt your brand. Creativly has everything you need for a successful website refresh.
See for yourself how we’ve helped innovative companies maintain their competitive edge online.
Are you ready to start your next website refresh? Connect with our team of design and marketing specialists to get started.