In the digital age, having a well-functioning, custom-designed website is just as important (if not more so for many businesses) as having an inviting, clean shop front. Your website is your digital identity. It's where customers will meet you, try to find out about what you offer, and even, depending what your company does, make the majority of their purchase decisions.

It stands to reason then that an outdated or badly presented website is as damaging to your reputation and bottom line as a filthy, understocked shop with terrible customer service. Luckily, maintaining an up-to-date, fully functional website is not a huge job anymore, and in the age of crowdsourcing, finding the perfect custom design is easy, quick and cost-effective.

But before you can check if your website is up to snuff, you need to know what you're looking for. These four considerations will give you an excellent starting point. If you suspect your website might be underperforming even in one of these areas, taking action straight away really is essential.

Does your website look and feel outdated?

Space Jam Homepage outdated since 1996

Nothing will ensure potential sales leads vanish into thin air quite like a badly outdated homepage. If your information is several years old, customers won't feel sure your company even still exists, and the vast majority of them will not bother to stick around and find out when there are hundreds of alternative options just a mouse click away.

This is if they even make it far enough into the site to notice your information is old. Web design circa 2006, and even 2011, is a far, far cry from web design 2016. If you don't keep moving at least vaguely with latest trends, your potential audience will return to Google page results in 0.5 seconds flat.

Your website is too cluttered

Take a look at recent winners of web design competitions, or type your top 100 company of choice into google, and you'll soon recognize we're deep in the age of minimalism. Wordy explanations of your company's history and detailed essays about product perks are out, big-impact images and helpful animations are in. Use only the words you absolutely need, or your modern audience will lose interest.

A website can still have lots of information, or use a busy theme of several colors and pictures to create something fun. But to pull that off you need an expert web designer who will make sure your clutter says more "charming quirky boutique" and less "hoarder's garage".

The website lacks a clear call to action

Apple Homepage 2013 - Current

Why do you have a website anyway? No, seriously? If your answer is anywhere in the ballpark of "because everybody has one", "because I need one" or "to make me successful" you'll have to sit down and get a lot more specific. Are you trying to make a direct sale? Grow your customer base? Position yourself as an industry expert? Create an online community around your brand?

Whatever it is, your website needs to make that goal perfectly clear in its design. Are your most successful sales items prominently displayed and clearly linked to a secure, easy check-out option? Do you ask your blog readers to sign up to your email newsletter or Facebook page, or to share your latest post with their friends? Do you encourage your readers to get in touch or join the conversation directly online?

Without a clear call to action built into the very fabric of your web design, customers are far more likely to browse for a while and then lose interest. Let them know what you want them to do, and make sure your web design makes it as easy as possible for them to follow through.

Your website is badly optimized

So maybe your website is pretty inviting for people – but answer this: is it inviting to robots, too? Think about how easily even us averagely skilled human beings can get confused or lost, and then think about how very far we are from getting anywhere near the complexity of human intelligence in our mechanical friends. Yet here they are, swimming in the currents of the internet and determining if your page relevance puts you on the first page of Google, or the eighty first.

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is hugely important to make sure your backstage area fully supports the show going on in the spotlight. Using straightforward URL paths, creating relevant site and image tags and making sure your coding is not a hot mess will help your website rank as relevant to your customer base when they search for your services online.

How to go about optimizing your entire website is probably a topic for another article (or ten), so for now just rest assured that if your answer to "How are you perfecting your SEO?" is "I don't know", you've got a problem on your hands.

With all the great web development and design options out there these days, it's really not that intimidating to keep your online presence pristine. Make sure you don't miss this hugely valuable opportunity to represent your company.

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Written by Jane Murray on Monday, January 11, 2016

Jane Murray is a freelance copywriter based in Sydney. Apart from writing up a storm for the DesignCrowd blog on anything from logo design to Michael Jackson's shoes, she enjoys reading literary science fiction and hanging out with most animals except wasps. Get in touch via LinkedIn.