Small business owners need to monitor whether their investment in a website is giving a good return. Are your goods and services easy to buy? If they aren't, you are wasting time and money and perhaps doing more harm than good.

Ask yourself the following five questions to see whether it's time for a redesign:

1. Has the size of the site grown significantly?
If your site continues to grow and change like most business sites, you require evaluating whether it's still meeting your objectives. As you add new goods and services you require re-organizing your information. In addition, you must consider adding multimedia information (audio, video) to sharpen your message.

2. Is some of the content outdated or unnecessary?
Does your website have up-to-date content? Someone must be revising spec sheets, changing promotion dates and adding new material weekly. If your website shows static, it looks like you're not a serious business.

3. Is the most significant content buried below?
Here's where you must to do an 'easy to buy' audit. By that I mean you require evaluating how easy it is to find information and actually buy your goods. This sounds like common sense, but we've all purchased online and know that it can sometimes be trying.

4. Are you using the latest technology, instead of hard-coding?
If you generated your website more than 18 months ago, you are perhaps due for a technology update. This is also true if you started with a very basic site and 'hard-coded' everything. Ask your webmaster whether he has some suggestions. You can be sure he will.

5. Does the home page design suit your present business objectives?
Does your website communicate the depth and breadth of your present business? If you have changed the focus of your services, added new goods or want to communicate a different face to your visitors, consider a redesign for your overall website.