Websites are subject to the same fashion trends as clothing, hairstyles and even cars. You might have spent a lot of time and money some years agao developing your existing website. But is the digital paint starting to look like the gloss has vanished?

Web fashion, unlike other trends, goes far deeper though. Not only is it about the front end veneer. The fashion that dictated your original website may be hurting you now because:

1) What worked for you 5 years ago on the internet - isn't now

2) Google and the other major Search Engines have moved on since then - leaving your organic search listings hitting your traffic numbers

3) Technology has moved on and web visitors are demanding far more from web pages

4) Furthermore, lack of a coherent strategy now means you have a hybrid website embracing many different styles and ideas - none of which link together all that well

Technology, standards, styles, and best practices on the web change faster than ever and although your website may still be completely functional, you may be lsoing potential customers unwittingly.

Here are 5 factors you need to consider to decide if you need a new website (or even a new web strategy)

1) Site Loading Times.
Google has been muting for some time that it will penalise organic search listings if website are slow opening. In terms of speed, how fast is your website? You’ve worked hard to get your visitors to come to your pages - don’t put them to off with long load times.

Longer load times = less visitors = less business.

A study conducted by Akamai in 2006 found that if your website takes longer than four seconds to fully load, 33%, or one-third, of all visitors will abandon your site. Additionally, Amazon found that a 100ms increase in site load time would result in a 1% decrease in sales, while Google found that an increase of 500ms on load time would directly result in a drop in traffic and revenue by 20%.

2) Website Consistency.
Although it may not seem like it, consistency in major elements on all pages of your site is a must. Elements like navigation, fonts and colors, URL format, and editorial style should show consistency throughout your website as it shows your professionalism and attention to detail when conducting business.

If your site is riddled with typos, mismatching font sizes, and non-loading images, not only will it impact the credibility of your website but can also negatively affect your search engine optimization strategy, which can result in lowered sales.

3) Scatter Gun Design.
One of the biggest mistakes website owners make is creating a design (or allowing a design to slip into a state) that simply overloads the vistor with information, imagery, links, icons, buttons, and ads. Information overload will prevent you from surfacing the most important information on your website while delivering a load of clutter your visitor will have to sift through. You’ll be shocked to see how quickly a set of eyes can glaze over. Boredom sets in a vistors leave.

I'll add to this point by discussing the age-old issue of too much choice. People are pretty simple when they hit the pages of the Internet - and as any good marketer will tell you: Keep It Simple Stupid. Equally be careful of offering too many options or things for people to decide upon whilst navigating your website. Even if they have to choose whether they want a download file or a phyiscal CD version of a programme can be enough to send visitors into a tail spin. So look through your website and consider removing choices, links and anthing else they prevents the user doing what you would like them to

4) Out of Date Design.
Just because your website looked great a few years back doesn't mean it does now. Compare your site to your competitors - how does it stack up? Get other people to comment on this issue - as web owners can get a distorted view. That Flash element you knew was brilliant in 2006 might make you look like your at school in a "hand me down" jumper now.

5) Browser Compatibility.
Internet browsers are constantly evolving - some issuing updates monthly. When was the last time you check your site in all current browsers on all operating systems, and on all platforms. Do you have any issues with text overlapping, extra scroll bars appearing, or maybe the site appearing left aligned when it was supposed to be centered in the page?. You absolutely do not want to degrade your customer’s user experience based on their choice of browser, regardless of if it’s Internet Explorer on Windows, Firefox on Mac, Google Chrome, or even Safari on the iPhone.

The key element here is to stay on top of the popular browsers and keep this checking process alive. You can use tools like Google Analytics to see what the most popular browsers are for your site (which could be helpful in niche markets) but fundamentally overall browser compatibility on both the PC and the Apple Mac is vital

So how does your website do when you reflect on these 5 factors?