What is the lifespan of a website?

There are various factors to consider in terms of when to update your business website, however, the average lifespan of a website’s design, functionality, and performance is around three to five years. If you think about a shopfront that opened over ten years ago with a strong brand and shiny new signage, you wouldn’t think twice about refreshing the branding and ordering new signage after a few years. The same goes for your online ‘store’ presence. It needs to look good, stand out from your competitors, be helpful and show up in the search results.

Your website should look fresh and up-to-date to provide a good experience for your customers and compete against your competitors. If you have an old-looking and outdated website design, the customer could assume that your business is no longer in operation or seek a more stylish, upbeat, and engaging ‘business’ for their products or service requirements. Remember, first impressions count! (You wouldn’t enter a dusty old dilapidated shop unless it was an antique store, and even then…). Plus, your website design needs to be optimised for mobile view. The older website versions didn’t always have an automatic mobile-friendly optimisation inhibiting legibility on mobile. Or not even being shown in search results because of Google’s strict algorithms. It is hardly surprising that Google’s main purpose is to ensure that customer experience is a top priority.

Has it kept up to date? (including the opportunity for plugin updates which can make small improvements over time to keep it more or less up to date. When running updates regular tests still need to be made.

Does your website reflect your business goals? Have they changed since you started your business and created a website? Do you have different methods for customers to contact you since then? Your website needs to be engaging and interactive for a good user experience. Your customer journey needs to be managed properly from the time they land on your website through to enquiry and conversion. Whether that’s signing up for something, purchasing, or obtaining a quote from you.

There are often subtle changes in a brand’s logo, tagline, and colours that may not have been applied back onto the website. Likewise, new social media accounts may have been created, but are they linked from the website, or embedded onto the website? We see it a lot where a business will pay for new branding on their socials (and new branding almost always looks much better than the original) but then it hasn’t been applied to the website, only to the social media banners and posts. The original website probably has the same or similar logo, but the fonts and visual assets are all much better on Facebook for example. While there is nothing wrong with this, there is an opportunity wasted, because over time your website will get far more visitors than most Facebook posts. It is always worth ‘repainting’ the website with your latest branding.

Has your business focus shifted? It is actually recommended that a business changes its offering over time. Dropping old services that aren’t working so well, and adding new services/packages are normal parts of optimising a business. Often times the business will shift direction but the website still has the old direction written on there. Clients come and go, licenses might change, dates like “in business for 25 years” get old, and many more scenarios mean that your website might not be resonating with your audience as much as it could be. If people are looking for your new service, but then see it isn’t on your website they may decide not to call. That one missed opportunity alone would probably have paid for the time to check in with your website designer and have it all re-examined each year.

So what’s the verdict? Make sure your website is performing well, is regularly updated, engaging and competitive, and meeting your business goals. Keep an eye on trends and technical updates and regularly review where you are positioned in terms of ranking and in the marketplace. Track your website visitation, how you rank against your competitors and above all, ask for regular and honest feedback from your customers, friends and family. Don’t forget to audit your website’s functionality every few months and check your loading speeds. When you start to approach the three year mark, consider refreshing and updating your existing website. After five years, perhaps you need a brand new website.

If you need help to determine whether or not it’s time to get a website revamp or a complete new website, MakeWeb are happy to provide you with honest advice and a quote should you need one.