A website starts costing you work long before anyone calls it old. The signs are usually practical rather than visual.
Businesses change faster than their websites. You take on different work, drop a service, hire people, move premises, raise prices. The site stays where it was, describing a version of the company that no longer exists. Here is how to tell when that gap has become expensive.
The work you want is not the work described
This is the clearest signal. If half your revenue now comes from a service that gets one line on the site, enquiries will keep arriving for the old work. Sales conversations that begin with "actually, we mostly do..." are a sign the site is filtering for the wrong customer.
You are apologising for it
If you hesitate before sending the link to a prospect, or you say "ignore the website" in meetings, that hesitation is doing damage you cannot see. Buyers who never speak to you are drawing the same conclusion in silence.
Details are wrong or out of date
- A copyright year several years behind.
- Staff listed who left, or missing people who joined.
- Prices, opening hours or a phone number that no longer apply.
- A news or blog section where the last item is from 2021.
Individually these are trivial. Together they suggest nobody is looking after the business, which is exactly the doubt you do not want in a buyer's mind.
It is awkward on a phone
Pinching to zoom, text that runs off the side, buttons too small to hit accurately, a form that will not submit on a phone. Check your own contact form from a mobile once a quarter. Silent form failures are one of the most common ways enquiries disappear without anyone noticing.
Nobody can update it
If changing a paragraph means emailing someone who may or may not reply, the site will drift. A site you can edit yourself stays accurate. That is worth more than a set of features you never use.
There are security warnings
A browser warning about the certificate, plugins years out of date, or a login page with no second factor are all reasons to act quickly. An abandoned site is an easy target, and a hacked business site is far more disruptive than a planned rebuild.
What to sort out before you commission a replacement
Most disappointing rebuilds are decided before any design work starts. Be clear on the following first.
- The one action you want a visitor to take, and how you will count it.
- The two or three services worth their own page, and the ones to drop.
- Who the site is for, described specifically enough to exclude people.
- What evidence you have available: reviews, photographs, accreditations, figures you are allowed to publish.
- Who owns the domain, the hosting and the login details.
- Who will keep the content current after launch, and how often.
Rebuild, or repair
Not every tired site needs replacing. If the structure is sound and you can edit it, rewriting the home page and service pages, replacing the photographs and fixing the forms will often recover most of the lost ground for a fraction of the cost. Rebuild when the platform is unsupported, when the structure no longer matches the business, or when nobody can safely make changes.
