Welcome to w3b-Doctor.com The home of clean simple web design.
There is a lot more than design needed for your website to be successful. Your website may have been state of the art, or at least modern a couple of years ago. It may have attracted customers to you and received good feedback in the past. Is this still the case? Search Engines are constantly evolving, content that gained you a first page ranking under the old algorithm may now place you on the second or third page of results.
There are many breathtaking sites out there, they draw a lot of interest, some site have dramatic pictures, graphics or content. But once you get past the shock, do their visitors stay and get to the real point of the site?
Not many people can afford to spend the equivalent to their year's turnover on the design of their website. However they will take inspiration from the dramatic designs and create a version at a price they can afford.
There are several layouts that will always be popular and look good. You will see evidence of them all over the web. The only thing that differentiates them is the accessories, or in the case of websites the colour scheme or level of graphics added to the base framework.
The labels that people tend to look for on websites are links to social media, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. However, it seems that many sites either do not have these links or if they do they are not functional, i.e. if you click on a link it is either dead (doesn't actually lead anywhere) or the quality of material on the social media site is not of sufficient quality to impress potential customers.
The biggest mistake (unless you are a web designer) is to try and make your own corporate website, as your whole company image depends on how it both looks and perform.