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The average life of a website is four to five years. It is an average, so it says nothing about your case: some eight-year-old sites work perfectly well, others deserve a rebuild after eighteen months. Age is not a criterion. What follows is.
Seven signals that justify a redesign
1. The site does not display properly on a phone
This is the one signal that decides on its own. Most visits come from mobile. A site designed before small screens mattered loses the larger part of its audience and is heavily downgraded by Google.
2. You can no longer change the content yourself
Having to call someone to change an opening time or add a page means the site will not live. In practice it freezes, then goes stale.
3. What you sell has changed
This is the best reason of all and the most often overlooked. A site describing the business of three years ago drives away exactly the customers you are looking for today. The problem is not aesthetic, it is commercial.
4. The technology is no longer maintained
A CMS on an unsupported version, abandoned plugins, hosting on an obsolete language version. This is not a comfort issue: it is a security hole that widens every month.
5. The site is slow and nothing more can be done
When the slowness comes from accumulated plugins and a heavy theme, you can claw something back. When it comes from the structure of the site itself, every optimisation costs more than it returns.
6. You are embarrassed to give out the address
The criterion sounds unserious. It is not. If you avoid mentioning your site in meetings, it is working against you. A prospect who looks at it after meeting you draws the same conclusion you do.
7. It generates no enquiries despite traffic
Careful with this one: it justifies a diagnosis, not necessarily a rebuild. In half the cases a shorter form and three pieces of proof are enough. We set out the method in why some websites generate no enquiries.
The four bad reasons
| The stated reason | Why it does not hold |
|---|---|
| "It is five years old" | Age says nothing. A clear, fast site from 2021 beats a new, confusing one. |
| "A competitor rebuilt theirs" | Their site answers their strategy. Copying a competitor means copying their mistakes without knowing their figures. |
| "We are tired of it" | You see your site a hundred times a month, your customers once. Your fatigue is not an indicator. |
| "To improve search rankings" | A badly run rebuild loses positions. Search is worked on the existing site's content first. |
The question to ask before deciding
What cannot be fixed on the current site?
List what bothers you, then put each line in one of two columns: fixable, or structural. Copy to rewrite, photos to change, a form to shorten, images to compress are fixable, often for a few hundred euros. An unreadable page structure, a dead technology, an inability to edit are structural.
If the fixable column holds everything, you do not need a redesign. If the structural column holds two lines or more, you do.
What to keep from the old site
A successful rebuild never starts from nothing. Three things carry over and are worth a great deal:
- The URLs that receive traffic. Every address removed without a 301 redirect is a lost position, and they do not come back on their own. The redirect plan is prepared beforehand, not afterwards.
- The content that works. A page that has brought visits for three years is not thrown away because the design changes.
- The measurement history. Keeping the same analytics account lets you compare before and after. With no point of comparison you will never know whether the rebuild achieved anything.
How long before starting over again
A site rebuilt properly, with content you can edit and a maintained technology, lasts five to seven years without a full redesign. What keeps it alive is not the technology but editorial upkeep: a few hours a quarter to refresh the offer, add a project and check that the practical information is still accurate.
Let us talk about your project
A 30-minute call is enough to define the scope, the budget and the schedule. You leave with a written estimate, no strings attached.
Based in Luxembourg, we work across the whole Grand Duchy.