How to know when it’s time to build a new website
February 3, 2025
In this four post series of blogs, we’ll explore when it is the right time for a complete website redesign or if it’s better to improve your existing website. There are three factors you should consider: you & your team, your brand & business objectives, and ultimately your end users.
In this first part of the series, we will focus on how a website rebuild can support you and your team’s efforts.
Rebuilding your website to support your daily efforts
While the first thing that always comes to mind when discussing a website design project is the layout, functionality, and how the end user receives your message, it’s critical to the success of your website that you have an administrative interface that supports your objectives. If your current website is hard to manage, it might be a sign that you need a new website.
Content management
While some template or website themes may be successful for the end user, you may run into issues with managing your own content. The biggest consideration on whether you should proceed with a new website is how well you can manage your site. If your current site is static, doesn’t allow you to manage your content without coding knowledge, or doesn’t allow you to create new pages and content with ease then it might be best to consider a website rebuild.
Your site uses a third party theme
One of the leading issues with not being able to manage your content is when a pre-built theme is used. These themes may look good at first, but they’re often designed to be used for very simple page layouts and you will likely run into many limitations. Examples of these limitations could include that they may not respond properly to all device sizes once you modify the content.
Templates are often generic, used by many different businesses, full of unnecessary code, not optimized for SEO or performance and most importantly not planned around your objectives.
Your site requires custom functionality
Much of the time a deciding factor in building a new, custom website design is the need for unique functionality. When you’re looking to use your website as a more holistic tool in your business rather than just a simple way to promote your services or products, it’s important to consider that your needs are unique to your business.
As your business expands, we suggest it’s best to develop a new website around your unique needs to support your business for years to come. Whether you’re looking to use your site as a lead generating tool, a customer management tool, a robust database management system, or even just looking to improve contact with your customers by improving your communication channels, we suggest it’s best to plan your website around those unique needs.
There is a lot more to a website than how it looks, and sometimes making your website more modern is as simple as making a few stylisting updates. If your website doesn’t allow for easy administration or it’s no longer meeting your business needs than we would recommend a new website.
Stay tuned for future posts in this series, which will be linked here as we publish them:
- When a custom website can support your branding and marketing
- Custom web design to support your users
- Benefits of a custom web design