If your site is not delivering on your current needs or if the experience doesn’t reflect your brand, you likely have thought about a new website. Often, the big question is whether it’s possible to simply update your current site or if it’s time for a new site. Essentially this is a decision for a longer term investment and more dramatic improvements or to continue a little longer with a band-aid approach that may be good enough for now.

The ultimate choice about whether or not to rebuild will depend on many factors, but here are five questions to consider:

1. If the Site Is Not Delivering the Results You Need

A website is designed to accomplish business objectives — for example, to increase brand awareness, generate leads, or sell products and services. If website visitors are not taking the desired actions to the degree needed, it could be due to a lack of clear calls to action, confusing navigation, or poor design. Some changes may be easy fixes to an existing site. More substantial redesign that helps visitors better connect, find what they need, and take actions such as filling out a form or purchasing a product may might be easier by starting new.

Navigation

Can visitors easily find what they are looking for?

Are site visitors able to quickly find what they need from the navigation and Home page? Your site may benefit from a fresh look at content organization founded on what key audiences understand about the organization and what they are looking to learn and do. Improvements can be made on a current site with strong text linking, use of buttons and creation of additional pages. But more substantial improvements that alter how content is organized throughout will be easier and better to start from scratch.

Page Design

Does content unfold naturally with compelling images and animation?

Effective page design is created from strong content and headlines that allow visitors to skim and quickly understand where to read further for more information. Website visitors are in different stages of the buying process, and good design takes that into account throughout the site experience. Does the site encourage visitors to stay? Are pages designed to help move visitors to related information throughout the site?

Copy

Is messaging clear, inspiring, and written with SEO in mind?

Are visitors able to skim headlines and get the gist of content without the “work” of reading body copy? For example, a headline such as, “WeProsper Coalition Works to Eliminate Predatory Lending Practices” is a better alternative than “What We Do” or “About the Coalition.” While headlines can be easily changed on an existing site, if headlines are lacking, it likely means there is room for improvement in adding content sections or conversely, tightening up copy heavy page designs.

Content

Do visitors have everything they need to engage and take action?

As companies grow, web content generally becomes more complex. A B2B services company may want to add a section on the site that showcases work. A nonprofit may desire a more robust experience for online donations or an events calendar that allows visitors to easily find, sort, and register online. Ecommerce sites may find that the original design is now too simple for a growing product line.

2. If the Site Experience Does Not Reflect Your Brand

Does your site effectively reflect the best of the organization, its purpose and strengths? Does it immediately convey why what you do is relevant to your key audiences? Is the experience compelling and memorable with a look and feel that speaks to audiences and captures the vibe of the company?

A strategically branded website should convey your company’s essence and reflect its priorities. A company that is the same today as it was yesterday can be perceived differently simply through the power of words, imagery, and design. For example, a brand refresh can dramatically change how visitors perceive the size and stature of a company. It can create greater confidence and trust in the organization leading visitors to be more likely to provide contact information or move all the way through to a purchase. If your website doesn’t accurately reflect your brand, it is beneficial to start over with an updated look and feel that will resonate better with your audience and provide an experience consistent with the brand’s essence and promise.

3. If the Platform Is Too Limiting

Many small businesses begin with a basic website built from a web builder on a proprietary hosting service such as Squarespace, WIX, Weebly, or GoDaddy. Or a site may be developed on an industry specific web builder platform such as TherapySites for therapists. These are excellent solutions for creating quick, inexpensive sites with little upfront cost. The upside simplicity however is also their downside. As companies grow, a new site will inevitably be needed due to needs for greater functionality and customized design that captures the organization’s uniqueness without limitation.

Back in the day, informational websites were often built in platforms like Joomla and Drupal (we built those, too back then!). Those have taken a back seat to WordPress which allows for easier content updating, custom design and almost limitless functionality.

4. When You Desire Custom Functionality and Flexibility

For informational sites, a custom WordPress site is most often the recommended solution for helping internal teams keep their site current. WordPress is particularly well-suited for organizing and filtering content such as blogs, events, products, and portfolios. As the volume of pages grows, it becomes important to easily recategorize and reorganize content to reflect current priorities.

WordPress functionality can also be expanded and customized over time, which is valuable for companies with plans not yet ready to be implemented. Verve has built WordPress sites that have grown to incorporate ecommerce, online payments, applications, forms, and integrations with third-party platforms right on the same site.

Custom functionality may also be needed for the frontend user experience or backend content management. For example, a WordPress site Verve developed for a book publisher was programmed to automatically generate new product pages and remove out-of-print titles by pulling from the same data feed used by retailers like Amazon and Barnes & Noble. This was a significant time-saver for managing thousands of products.

Another client needed a less manual way of updating onsite links to dozens of retailers, each of which carried only a subset of products—making a one-size-fits-all automation impossible. Verve developed a custom solution that sent an automated mass email to all retailers, directing each to their own individualized page where they could update their product listings—changes that then automatically populated to the site. This shifted the responsibility to the retailers themselves and was a significant time-saver for internal staff who had previously managed every link by hand.

5. When the Site Is Simply Old and Not Functioning Well

This is the most common reason organizations decide it’s time for a new website. Web technology evolves rapidly, and older sites increasingly struggle to keep pace. Conflicts develop between an aging theme, outdated plugins, and the ever-changing external environment which will cause parts of the site to break or behave unpredictably. At some point, patching becomes more costly and time-consuming than starting fresh.

As a rule of thumb, a site more than 5–7 years old is likely approaching this threshold. The problems show up in two ways: functionally and visually.

On the functional side, technology shifts can render older sites obsolete almost overnight. A now-classic example is Flash, the animation platform that dominated web design in the early 2000s. When Apple excluded Flash from the iPad in 2010 citing security concerns, its decline was set in motion. Adobe officially ended Flash support on December 31, 2020 — and sites that hadn’t migrated simply stopped working. While Flash is an extreme case, the pattern repeats itself in subtler ways with every major shift in web standards.

Responsiveness is another example. Google announced it would factor mobile-friendliness into search rankings over a decade ago, and sites built after July 1, 2019 were indexed mobile-first by default. Today, mobile-first design is table stakes — not a differentiator. Sites that were built before these standards became the norm are increasingly penalized in search rankings, regardless of how well they may have performed in their day.

On the visual side, an older site simply looks old—and users notice. Design conventions, typography, and interaction expectations have shifted considerably even in the past few years. Beyond aesthetics, newer technologies enable functionality and user experiences that weren’t possible or practical when many aging sites were built. A site that hasn’t kept pace doesn’t just look dated; it signals to visitors that the organization behind it may be as well.

Make the Most of Your Most Important Marketing Asset

All marketing is leveraged by an effective website. If one or more of the above describe your situation—outdated or weak branding, limiting design and functionality, or the site is not delivering the results you need—the benefits of a new website are likely worth the investment.

We hope these suggestions are helpful! Contact us if you’d like to chat about your specific situation. As a web maintenance provider, we’re happy to make changes to help you extend the life of your current site if that is a better decision at this time.

By Joan Begitschke, Chief Brand and Marketing Strategist at Verve Marketing Group.