Investing in a website redesign is no small undertaking, and the first question your team should ask when considering taking on the project is: Is it the right time?
If you search for answers to this question online, you’ll often come across a number of recommendations that suggest a website should always be refreshed or redesigned after an arbitrary number of years. But we believe that it’s not the amount of time that has passed since your last website update that’s the best determinant of whether it’s time to redesign, but rather that there are a number of signals we can look towards that showcase the various ways your current website may no longer serve your organization.
With that in mind, we’ve put together a list of signals and considerations to help your team determine whether you need a new website and whether you’re ready to embark on a redesign project. Taking these signals into account, you can ensure you invest your time and resources at the best possible moment, yielding a new website that better expresses who your organization is, reaches your nonprofit’s key audiences, and accomplishes your unique goals.
5 Signals That It’s Time for a Website Redesign
These are the most common challenges that bring organizations to our team and are key indications that it may be time to consider a redesign.
1. Your Website is Underperforming
One of the easiest indicators that it may be time to invest in a website redesign is when your numbers tell you exactly that story. Often, a decrease in website performance can occur over months or even years, making it difficult to catch without regular reporting. But if you’re seeing consistent dips in traffic or users, it’s an indication to look closer.
Older websites often collect technical debt over time, as inefficient code fixes, plugins, and page numbers grow. This technical debt can bloat your website, causing slower page load times that not only reduce the user experience but also harm search rankings. If your website is receiving less traffic from search engines, showing significantly slow load times on PageSpeed Insights, or yielding a high bounce rate, these are all key indications that it may be time to consider a website redesign. Additionally, if your mobile user experience is poor, it’s likely contributing to these declines in traffic. Confusing navigation and inconsistent experiences across mobile and web versions of your website create a poor overall user experience, and you’ll see this reflected in your engagement metrics.
In addition to these standard metrics, your nonprofit likely has specific website metrics that clearly indicate underperformance. For organizations that accept online donations, a noticeable decrease in donation volume will be a key indicator. For organizations that rely on engagement with features such as online petitions, newsletter subscriptions, contact form submissions, or other key functionality, these will be the indicators. A significant decrease in user engagement across any of your website’s most important functions may signal that it’s time.
2. Your Team is Frustrated
While the front end of your website needs to be designed well to engage your audience, your CMS also needs to be built so your team can easily maintain, manage, and update it. Often, clients come to us not solely because their current website isn’t reaching users as it needs to, but also because it has become a significant pain point for their team. Especially in nonprofits, where teams often work in fast-paced environments and hold many roles and responsibilities, having an easy-to-update CMS is key. If your team expresses that publishing on the website or otherwise maintaining the site has become a blocker, this is also a key indicator that it may be time to consider a redesign.
3. Your Website No Longer Reflects Who You Are
Another key signal that it may be time is when you know your website no longer accurately reflects your organization’s brand strategy, personality, or broader organizational positioning. If your team has recently gone through any internal efforts to update how you define and communicate your mission and vision for the world, your funding approaches, or even your service offerings, it’s likely that your website no longer reflects who you are.
Especially over the past few years, with the Trump administration’s funding shakeups and opposition to diversity, equity, and inclusion, many nonprofits have been forced to adapt. In some rare cases, it may be enough to update the language on your website. But for the vast majority of organizations, your new brand identity or organizational strategy will require a new website with updated navigation, information architecture, user pathways, and content. Your website needs to champion your brand. Rather than trying to tweak your existing website to accommodate significant brand changes, building a new website is the best option after a major brand update.
4. Your Visuals and Content Are Outdated
Another simple, easy-to-spot indication that it’s time to consider a redesign is when your website’s visual design appears outdated and when your website content feels stale. This may mean that the visual design of your site is outdated compared to other marketing materials your organization creates, or that the visuals reflect older design limitations and trends. It may also mean that your website content no longer reflects how your organization speaks about your work, or that it is simply outdated.
Since your website often serves as a key (or a first) touchpoint with your brand, outdated visuals and content can allow audiences to make incorrect assumptions about your organization’s ability to perform. And especially in the age of AI, having a differentiated, authentic, and human-centered visual brand with strong human-written content can significantly differentiate your organization from others. If you find yourself avoiding sharing your website with potential or existing partners because it’s outdated, this is a great indication that it may be time to consider a redesign.
5. Your Website No Longer Serves Its Purpose
This is the most important signal and is often due to a combination of the prior signals contributing to a website that simply no longer serves its purpose. And given how important websites are as tools for many nonprofits, this can have broader consequences, with your website actually barring your organization from succeeding or growing.
Maybe your website’s declining performance is starting to limit your funding opportunities. Or maybe your website’s poor user experience is limiting your partnership opportunities. Maybe your website’s old and outdated content is making it that much harder to connect directly with the communities you serve. If your website is not clearly accomplishing what it was last built to accomplish, it’s time to consider a redesign. And maybe the website isn’t serving its purpose anymore because its purpose has actually changed due to an update to your organization’s strategy or brand. If this is the case, it’s also a great time to redesign.
Additional Considerations for When to Invest in a Redesign
If any number of the above signals apply to you, it just might be time. But because a redesign is a large undertaking, it’s also important to reflect on the following considerations to ensure that your team is ready for the commitment and to think intentionally about the best time to launch a new website.
1. Ensure Your Team Can Invest Time as Well as Money
When your team decides to invest in a redesign, the financial budget is often a large consideration. While having a proper budget that matches your needs is key, what’s often forgotten in this process is the other investment your team must make: time.
Website redesigns are a highly collaborative process. At Constructive, our team meets regularly with client teams as we progress through a project to discuss project needs and goals, engage the wider team and stakeholders, discuss deliverables and feedback, and to present work. As you consider redesigning your website, it’s especially important to think about whether members of your team can serve as the main point(s) of contact. Points of contact will need to devote significant time and attention to the project, working with our team to identify the correct stakeholder groups, filter and collect feedback, and provide final approvals. For website redesigns to be the most successful, it’s important to invest when your team is confident that they can carve out the necessary time to approach the project with intentionality and care.
2. Check That You’re Ready to Talk Strategy
As I’ve said previously, your website should be your largest champion and expression of your organization’s brand, and it should be built as a tool to reach your organization’s unique goals and mission. It can be challenging to achieve this with a website redesign when those goals or your mission is unclear. So it’s also important to consider whether your team is ready to talk strategy.
We never expect clients to have all of the answers when they start a website redesign. This is why we start every project with a Research & Discovery phase, where we review the client’s current website, learn about the organization, and lead Q&As and discussions with client teams. Often, our Q&As include questions about our clients’ goals and needs and focus on how the website can contribute.
But it can be difficult to build a website that delivers the highest return on investment for client teams when there’s little alignment between team members on the organization’s core brand ideas or goals. If your team is at a point where they have vastly different ideas about the right direction for your organization or communications, it’s likely important to have internal discussions before turning to a website redesign. If this sounds like your organization, it may even be the right time to engage in a brand strategy process before a website redesign. At Constructive, we often couple brand strategy and website work, starting by defining the brand before building the website. This gives us an incredibly strong basis for developing an updated website that not only reflects the brand but also champions it.
3. Consider the Best Time to Launch Your New Website
It’s also important to consider the timing of any website redesign project you take on, so your team can coordinate the website’s launch with any key internal milestones or functions. Website redesign projects can vary in length, with smaller websites often taking only a few months to complete, and complex projects sometimes requiring a year of collaboration. Regardless of whether your project is large or small, your team will want to consider the optimal timing for launching your new website before embarking on a redesign.
Some of the most common launch considerations revolve around funding seasons. If your organization’s website is key to collecting digital donations, it will be important to launch it before your funding season, so you have time to work out any kinks before the season moves into full swing. But we also often see organizations interested in launching a website alongside other major milestones, such as an organizational anniversary or a sub-brand launch. When you launch a new website, you are likely guaranteeing some increased visibility among your audiences, so tying this announcement in with other strategic announcements can be a great idea. It’s important to remember that a rushed website redesign is never optimal, so if you want to plan around other organizational factors, you should start early.
So, is it Time to Redesign Your Nonprofit’s Website?
It’s not always easy to know the best time for your team to invest in a website redesign. And it’s likely that only some of the above signals apply to your current website. But a good gut check is the fact that you came across this article in the first place. If you did, it’s likely that you’re already considering whether a redesign is in your near future and just need confirmation that it might be time. If not, you now know what to watch out for and when to come back to check again if the times are right. And if you want to discuss further whether your team should consider a redesign, reach out! We’d love to talk with you.
Learn more about how we approach website redesigns or contact us!
