How to tell the difference between a website that needs tidying and one that needs rebuilding from the ground up.
Rebuilding a website is disruptive, so it is worth being honest about whether you need one. These are the signals that usually mean patching will keep costing you.
- It is uncomfortable to use on a phone, where most of your traffic is
- You cannot make a simple content change without asking somebody
- Pages take more than three seconds to become usable
- The services you sell today are not the services on the site
- Enquiries arrive by phone because the forms are awkward or broken
- It looks visibly older than your competitors' sites
- Nothing on the site is structured for search
Patch when the bones are good
If the structure is sound, the content model works and the site is quick, then design refinements and content work will get you a long way for a fraction of the cost.
Rebuild when the model is wrong
When the underlying content model no longer fits the business, every change fights the system. That is the point at which a redesign is the cheaper option — provided the rebuild protects the pages that already earn you traffic.