New website or a better homepage? How to tell which you need

When a website is not producing enquiries, the instinct is to start over. Sometimes that is right. Often the problem sits in a few pages and a few paragraphs, and a rebuild would repeat it in a prettier frame. Here is a way to tell which situation you are in: first find out what is actually wrong.

Start with the symptom

"The site looks old" is not a diagnosis. Try to describe the problem in terms of what happens to a visitor. People leave straight away. People read but never get in touch. People get in touch but ask for things you do not offer. Each of these points to a different cause, and only some of the causes need a new site.

Signs that a better homepage is enough

The structure of the site is sound, changes get made quickly, and it works on a phone. But the front page is vague, crowded or out of date. In that case the job is mostly words and layout on one page:

• The top of the page does not say what you do, who for, and what to do next.
• Five different buttons compete for attention.
• The best proof you have, such as customer comments, completed jobs and years in business, is buried at the bottom.
• The services you most want to sell are hard to find.

This is a small project. It can be done in days, tested, and compared with how the old page performed. It also costs far less than a rebuild.

Fix the page people land on before you rebuild the whole house.

Signs that you need a new website

Some problems cannot be repaired by editing a page, because they sit underneath it.

• Changes are slow or costly. Every small edit means a new invoice, so the site goes out of date and stays that way.
• The platform is no longer supported. If the software behind the site no longer gets security updates, patching around it is a risk that grows.
• It does not work properly on a phone. If the layout was never made for small screens, fixing it page by page often costs more than starting fresh.
• The business has changed. You added a service line, moved into a new area or changed who you sell to, and the pages no longer fit the company.
• It is painfully slow, and resizing the photos did not help.

Any one of these is a reasonable case for a rebuild. Two or more settles it.

A quick way to decide

Ask yourself three questions, in this order.

1. If I could rewrite only the homepage tomorrow, would that fix most of what bothers me?
2. Can I get that change made quickly, without paying for a project each time?
3. Do the other pages still describe the business I run today?

If the answers are yes, yes and yes, rework the homepage. If the answer to the second question is no, you have a different problem, which is that the site is hard to change, and no homepage rewrite will cure that. If the third is no, the work is bigger than one page.

The middle option

There is a path in between that people overlook. Rework the homepage and the two or three pages that matter most. Leave the rest alone. Then watch for a few weeks: do more people get in touch, and do the right kind of people? If so, you have bought time and learned what your customers respond to, which makes any later rebuild far better aimed. If not, you have spent little and found out that the trouble lies deeper.

A warning about rebuilds

A new website resets everything, including the things that worked. Old pages that people bookmarked or that appear in search results can vanish if the new site uses different addresses and nobody redirects them. Before any rebuild, list the pages that bring in visitors today and make sure each has a home in the new site. Also decide who will write the words. A new design with the same vague text will perform about the same as the old one.

Where to start

1. Write down, in one sentence, what is going wrong for the visitor.
2. Show the top of your homepage to someone outside your industry for five seconds and ask what you sell.
3. Check whether a change to the site takes one email or a new invoice, and whether it works on a phone.
4. List the pages that bring people in today.
5. If it is the homepage, fix that first and measure for a month before spending more.

Next: What a small-business website should actually do