When is it a good time to upgrade or replace your website?
We come across this question every day with prospective clients considering whether it’s time to replace their site or not, what to do and how it should be done. This article covers some key points we think you should consider.
Relevance
Is the website still relevant for your business and your customers and target market? Over time, you’re going to change, but if the site doesn’t reflect those changes then you will not be sending a clear message to the people who need to hear it, which will cost you in sales or other important business metrics.
Age
The age of the site plays a key part in deciding whether to revisit your website situation. The rate of change in technology brings a whole lot of bells and whistles, but it also brings with it many practical improvements that can be applied to add value to you and save you time and improve your business or organisation.
Blocker to effective marketing activities
This is a personal favourite for me – sites over time become less effective at performing as a marketing tool, the reasons various. Often and more importantly they can act as a blocker to effective marketing activities. This may be due to the site not doing what it is supposed to, or not allowing you to easily go about marketing activities like enewsletters, customer sign ups and registration.
All of these things chip away at effective marketing, and this in turn has a compounding negative impact on the business.
Value to customers
What is the website there for? Does it serve any value to customers and prospective clients? If so, this needs to be considered, as your website will serve some purpose to those people and if they’re not getting that benefit, or not understanding your operation in the way you had intended, the value will be lost for them.
What this means for the organisation is something that needs review and consideration.
Do I replace or upgrade our existing website?
From the perspective of a Web Agency, when it comes to replacing or upgrading there are a lot of complex behind the scenes factors we are thinking about when advising you. The lifespan of any website is finite, but is it worth replacing the whole thing with something completely brand new or trying to work with the existing site and improving it?
Sometimes the latter can be a bandaid solution which will not be as cost effective as a full replacement.
Sometimes replacing the site isn’t cost effective and there would be more short term value in making some improvements or tweaks.
It really depends on the state of the website, whether it has been continuously upgraded and maintained over the course of time, and whether it’s more relevant or valuable to start again. All these questions need to be discussed and decided upon.
If you have any questions about what you should do about your own site, feel free to reach out with any questions.