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Aging Web Site Replacement

Most small business web sites have a real-world life span of 3-5 years. Is it time to refresh yours?

Your site has been up for a while now. You've seen it in action and perhaps spoken with clients who have used it to find you or do business with you. That's great. What have you learned?

Since small business web sites will usually last from 3-5 years if they are working well, there comes a time to retire your old friend and update on a grand scale. You should have been adding new material and even functions to your site over time, so you have some idea of how this works. We want to know what you discovered from running the old site before we look at replacing it.

If your site was under-performing, we need to understand why. Did you have Google Analytics running on the site? What did reveal to you? What do your site users say? Do they come back repeatedly? Are they who you thought they would be? Are you offering what they want to find? What online marketing steps have you taken? What worked and what didn’t?

Normally, the concern we hear is “nobody comes to the site”. This is a tricky issue as it could be a combination of issues.

Replacing an existing web site is more than just parking a new web design on the internet and hoping for the best. You've made an investment in the old site and there's no reason why that should be ignored.

First, there's the need to understand your audience. Has it changed over time? Does the old site still address their needs? They are the reason and the engine for your online business. There's no point in making them unhappy. Understanding this should inform everything you do - and everything we do to.

Then there's Google and Bing. When the site is replaced, what happens to the links on search engines that are still pointing to the old pages? We can help sort that out and will take it into account when building the replacement web site.

How's the site content? Do you still have pictures of flip-phones and jackets with padded shoulders showcasing your services? We don't write or create the content for your new site, but we can help you clear away the dead wood.

What about you? How do you find maintaining the old site? Was it easy? Were there things you hated doing - so you put them off? If we know this, we can fix it.

Replacing a web site is a big deal. It should build on the things you've learned as a business owner. The new site should move ahead while respecting the work that got to that point.  Even the oldest, weakest site has something to teach us when the time comes for retirement.