Your old website still works. Should you redo it?

Maybe your site went up in 2014. The phone number is right, the address is right, people still find you. It just looks old. Your nephew said so. Someone at a networking event said so. You've been wondering whether it's costing you customers or whether it's fine.

Often it's fine. Sometimes it's quietly losing you work. Here's how to tell the difference, and what to do in each case. Sometimes the answer is a full rebuild, sometimes a few hours of fixes.

Start with the phone test

Open your site on your phone. Not on your computer. Most people looking up a local business are on a phone, so this is the version that matters.

Try to do what a new customer would do:

• Can you tell what the business does in the first few seconds, without scrolling?
• Can you find the price, the menu or the services in one or two taps?
• Can you get in touch or book without pinching and zooming?
• Does it load fast, or do you watch a blank screen?
• Is the text readable without zooming in?

If your site passes all five, it's probably doing its job. Looking dated is a smaller problem than people think. A plain, fast, clear site beats a pretty, slow one.

If it fails two or more, keep reading.

Signs it's time for a rebuild

It doesn't work on phones. Text too small, buttons too close together, a layout made for a desktop screen. This is the strongest reason to rebuild, because it hits most of your visitors.

Nobody can change it. The person who built it moved on, the login is lost, or it runs on software nobody supports anymore. Every update becomes a project. At some point a new site costs less than fighting the old one.

It's built on something that's going away. Some older site builders and plugins stop getting updates. An unsupported site is an easy target for bots, and it can break with no one to fix it.

It no longer describes your business. You've added services, dropped others, moved, rebranded. If more than half the content is wrong, a fresh start is often easier than editing every page.

It's not secure. If the browser shows "Not secure" next to your address, visitors see that too. Sometimes this is a quick fix (adding a certificate). Sometimes it's a sign of bigger age.

Signs it just needs fixing

The design is old, but the site works. Fast, clear, works on phones, easy to contact you. A refresh of photos and text might be all it needs.

One or two pages are wrong. Old prices, old hours, a staff member who left. These are small changes, often 15 to 30 minutes each.

It's a little slow. Big photos are the usual cause. A speed and mobile check with fixes usually takes one to two hours.

It's missing one thing. A booking button, a quote form, a menu page. Adding a form is usually about an hour. A new page from your text and photos is one to two hours.

A few hours of fixes at $100 an hour is a lot less than a rebuild. If that's all your site needs, I'll say so.

What a rebuild actually changes

A good rebuild doesn't only change the look. It should:

• Work well on phones first
• Put what customers need (prices, booking, hours, location) up top
• Load fast
• Be easy to change, by you or by whoever looks after it
• Keep your address and your old page links working, so you don't lose what Google already knows about you

That last one is easy to get wrong. If your old site has been up for years, Google knows its pages. A rebuild that changes every web address without pointing the old ones to the new ones can drop you out of search for a while. Ask anyone rebuilding your site how they'll handle old links.

What it costs either way

Fixes: $100 an hour, with an estimate first. Most single tasks take under two hours.

A rebuild: from $1,500, with the price fixed before I start. You own the finished site. Host it anywhere, or with me for $39 a month.

Spreading it out: a rebuild can start at $0 down when you take the Steady plan ($149 a month) or the Busy plan ($279 a month) for 12 months. Both include hosting plus monthly hours for changes.

You can see real sites I've built and look after (like corevisuals.nyc and thelightroomstudios.com), plus clearly labeled concept builds for different trades, on the work page.

What to gather before you ask anyone

Whether you fix or rebuild, a few things save time and money:

• Your logins. The domain account, the hosting account, the site's admin. If you don't know where any of these are, find out first. It's the most common thing that slows a rebuild down.
• The pages that matter. Which pages people actually use, if you know. Old analytics help. So does asking yourself what customers mention.
• What's wrong. Your phone test notes, plus anything customers have complained about.
• New photos, if the old ones are as dated as the design.

A simple way to decide

Do the phone test. Write down what failed. If it's a short list of small things, fix them. If it's most of the list, or nobody can log in to change anything, rebuild.

And if you're not sure, send me the link. I'll tell you which side of that line it's on. All prices are on pricing.