Do you actually need a new website? An honest checklist

I build websites for a living, so you’d expect me to say yes.

But the honest answer is that sometimes a new website is exactly what you need, and sometimes it’s an expensive way of avoiding the real problem.

Here’s how to tell the difference.

Five questions.

1. Are people finding you but not enquiring?

Look at your numbers (Google Analytics, or even the insights in your Google Business Profile).

If you’re getting hundreds of visitors and only a handful of enquiries, you’ve got a conversion problem, which just means people are turning up and then not doing anything - and that usually IS the website, the message, the proof or the next step.

A rebuild (or a proper refresh) will pay for itself.

If you’re getting 30 visitors a month, though, your problem is being seen, not the website.

A shinier site nobody sees gets exactly as many enquiries as an ugly one nobody sees.

Sort your Google profile and your local SEO first.

2. Are you scared to touch it?

If changing a phone number means ringing a developer, waiting a week and paying for the privilege (or worse, a plugin update once took the whole thing down), your website has become a liability.

Rebuild it.

Modern static sites, which are just simple, ready-made pages with nothing to update behind them, don’t break and don’t hold you hostage.

3. Does it embarrass you?

Here’s a proper test.

When someone says “I’ll have a look at your website”, do you wince?

Do you add “it’s a bit out of date”?

Your website is your shop window and you’re apologising for it.

That costs you work in ways you’ll never measure, because the people who looked and quietly moved on never tell you.

4. Has your business outgrown it?

The site says what you did in 2019.

Since then you’ve added services, dropped others, gone more upmarket or changed the areas you cover.

Say you run a physio clinic that’s stopped doing general sports massage to focus on back pain.

If your website still leads with sports massage, it’s bringing in the enquiries you don’t want and putting off the ones you do.

5. Is it slow on your phone?

Open your site on your phone, on mobile data, not wifi.

Count the seconds.

Past three, you’re losing people, and Google knows it too.

Speed problems can sometimes be fixed without a rebuild, but if the site was built on a creaky old page builder, starting again is usually cheaper than digging through what’s there.

The honest scoring

Mostly no: leave the website alone. Spend the time and money on being seen (your Google profile, your reviews) or on following up enquiries faster.

One strong yes: you might just need a patch, a sharper message, better proof or faster hosting.

Two or more: rebuild it. It’s quicker than you think, and the difference keeps adding up every month it’s live.

The mistake I see most is buying a new website because it’s the thing you can see, when the leak is somewhere else entirely.

It’s why I look before I build, and why I’ll tell you if a website isn’t what you need.

Even though I build websites for a living.

Want me to look for you?

Go through the five questions tonight and count your yeses. If you’d rather have a second pair of eyes on it, that’s what Your Web Review is for. I look at your website, Google profile, reviews and socials, record a video going through it all, and give you the three things I’d fix first.

No big sales pitch.

Get your free Web Review

And if you’d like one short email every Sunday on making your marketing easier, get the Marketing Memo. It’s free.