Refreshing your website for 2025

As 2025 gets underway and Christmas and New Year celebrations disappear from the rear-view mirror, it’s a good time to think about your website and assess whether it’s as fresh, relevant and competitive as it could be.

After all, for most people, it’s their first impression of your organisation. So you absolutely cannot afford to let it fossilise.

Here are some things to consider for your website:

How is your website doing right now?

Use tools such as SEMrush or Google Analytics to measure important metrics, including bounce and conversion rates and traffic volume. You’ll then have a better idea of how and where you can improve and understand whether pages are loading too slowly, content is underperforming, or your design has become outdated.

In particular, look at how your site performs on mobile devices. This type of use dominates web traffic, so it’s hugely important.

Is your design ready for a refresh?

A tired or outdated-looking website can really put people off. So a design overhaul can make all the difference. For this year, clean lettering, uncluttered layouts and bold colours are all set to be bang on-trend.

Don’t forget that you’ll also need to display your branding consistently throughout your website and that navigation must be user-friendly. Finally, visuals should be high-quality, plus it’s always worth boosting engagement by uploading videos.

Is your site as secure as it could be?

Anyone who goes online will consider cybersecurity to be a top priority. And your visitors must feel able to trust you and go to your site with confidence. Provide reassurance with badges and certifications and use HTTPS protocol. Update plug-ins regularly and have a firewall in place, along with other security measures such as real-time malware scanning.

Get interactive

Add things like quizzes, chats and competitions to boost visitor engagement. Doing so may also give you an invaluable feel for what your customers like and enjoy.

Update content and strategy

Go through your current web pages and blogs. Is everything still accurate, fresh and relevant? Can you add news, enhance the formatting or incorporate some more recent statistics or other information?

The need for speed

Page-loading speed is hugely important to the way search engines rank your website and the user experience generally. Use tools such as Google PageSpeed to learn more. There are other things you can try, too, including using a dependable hosting service and compressing images while minimising your use of CSS and JavaScript.

Be accessible

This is a legal requirement in the UK. Ask your hosting organisation about the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and measure your site against their compliance standards so that it reaches people with a wide range of disabilities and other challenges. That way, you eliminate potential legal risks and show a firm commitment to inclusivity while enjoying high engagement and satisfaction among users.

How SWSweb can help refresh your website

In summary, a website refresh or redesign isn’t a luxury. It’s an essential aspect of future-proofing your brand, so that you meet the needs of modern users and surpass their expectations; it also helps you meet your business goals.

At SWSweb, we’ve been supporting all kinds of businesses with their websites since 2012. And as well as basic support, we provide outstanding managed hosting, security management and web design. Learn about our (pun intended) host of services and get in touch to find out more about how we could transform your website in 2025.