The short version
An old website rarely fails loudly. It just quietly converts fewer of the people who find it, and because you never see the ones who left, nothing looks wrong. Below are seven checks you can run yourself in about ten minutes. If three or more of them fail, your site is costing you real work, and a rebuild from $400 will pay for itself faster than you would expect.
1. Open it on your own phone
The test
Pull it up on your phone, not your computer. Can you read your own opening hours without pinching and zooming? Can you tap your phone number and have it dial?
Why it matters
More than half the people looking you up are on a phone, and most of them are looking for one of three things: are you open, where are you, what is the number. If any of those takes effort, a good share of them go back to the results and call whoever is next on the list. You never find out it happened.
2. Time how long it takes to open
The test
Count the seconds from tapping the link to being able to read something. On a phone, on mobile data rather than your own wifi.
Why it matters
Three seconds is roughly where people start leaving. Old small business sites are routinely at eight or nine, almost always because of photographs uploaded straight off a camera at full size. It is one of the cheapest things to fix and one of the most visible.
3. Look at the bottom of the page
The test
What year does the copyright line say?
Why it matters
A footer that says 2016 reads as a business that may not be trading any more. That is not fair, but it is the read, and people act on it before they ever call to check. The same goes for a news or blog section whose last entry is four years old.
4. Check whether the browser warns people off
The test
Does the address bar say “Not secure”, or show a crossed-out padlock?
Why it matters
Browsers now put a warning in front of sites without an SSL certificate, and on some setups it is a full-page interstitial people have to click through. Almost nobody clicks through. Certificates are free; there is no good reason to be without one.
5. Try to contact yourself
The test
Fill in your own contact form and send it. Then wait.
Why it matters
Broken contact forms are extraordinarily common, and the failure is silent: the visitor sees “thank you” and you never get the email. We find one about every third rebuild. If yours has been quiet lately, this is the first thing to check, before you conclude the market has gone soft.
6. Search for yourself the way a stranger would
The test
Search for what you do plus your town, in a private browsing window so your own history does not flatter the result. Not your business name — you will always rank for that.
Why it matters
Ranking first for your own name tells you nothing. If you are nowhere for “electrician Sioux Falls” then everyone who does not already know your name is finding somebody else. That is a local SEO problem rather than a design problem, and the fix is different.
7. Count how many clicks to the thing you sell
The test
From the homepage, how many taps to find out what you actually do and what it costs?
Why it matters
A homepage that opens with a welcome message and a stock photograph is spending its most valuable space on nothing. People arrive with a question. The faster the page answers it, the more of them stay.
If you failed three or more
- Your site is losing you work now, not theoretically
- A rebuild keeps your address, your content and your rankings
- Flat price from $400, quoted in writing before anyone starts
- Two to three weeks, and your current site stays up the whole time
Not sure which you need?
If the site is dated but people do find it, a rebuild is the cheaper and safer job. If there is nothing worth keeping, or no site at all, a new website from $600 makes more sense. We wrote the longer comparison in website rebuild vs new website, or you can just send us your web address and we will tell you which one you are.