Rebuild or repair? A test that takes ten minutes

Answer honestly. Score one point for each yes.

1. Can you change a price, a photo or an opening time yourself, in under five minutes? If every trivial change means emailing somebody and waiting two days, the site is already costing you more than it looks. This is the single strongest argument for a rebuild, because it never gets better on its own.

2. Does it load in under three seconds on a phone, on mobile data? Test it properly — private window, mobile data, not your office wifi. If it is over five seconds and the cause is the platform rather than the images, no amount of patching fixes it.

3. Is it built on something still supported? A site on an abandoned framework, an unsupported PHP version, or a plugin whose author disappeared is a security incident waiting to happen. This one is not about appearance. It is about whether you get hacked this year.

4. Does it work properly on a phone? Not "does it shrink" — does it actually work. Can you complete a purchase, fill a form, read the menu, tap the buttons without zooming. Over half your visitors are on phones. If the answer is no, that is not a cosmetic issue.

5. Does it do what the business does now? Businesses change faster than their websites. If you have added a service, moved premises, changed who you sell to, and the site still describes the old business, the words are the problem, not the code.

6. When you show it to someone, are you slightly embarrassed? Not a technical criterion, but a reliable one. If you find yourself apologising before you show it, your customers are forming that impression without the apology.

5–6 yes. Repair. You have a working site with specific problems. Fix them individually — the images, the copy, the one broken form. Spending on a rebuild buys you novelty, not results.

3–4 yes. It depends, and the deciding factor is question 1. If you can edit it yourself and it is merely dated, repair and redesign the surface. If every change needs a developer, the cost of ownership will exceed a rebuild within about two years.

0–2 yes. Rebuild. You are paying to maintain something that is not serving you, and each patch is on foundations that will need replacing anyway.

The question is never "is this site good". It is "what does the next two years cost me on this site versus a new one".

Do not underestimate this route. In order of return:

• Compressing images. Frequently halves load time on its own.
• Rewriting the words. The most under-rated change available. Most small business sites describe what the business is rather than what the customer gets. Fixing that changes conversion without touching a line of code.
• Fixing the enquiry path. Making sure the form works, arrives, and is answered.
• Filling in the Google Business Profile. Not the website at all, and often the highest-return hour available to a local business.
• Removing dead weight. Old plugins, unused scripts, tracking for tools you stopped using.

That list is a fortnight of work and it will outperform a mediocre rebuild.

• You cannot edit your own content.
• The platform is slow no matter what you remove.
• It is not secure and cannot be made secure.
• You need functionality the current stack cannot support.
• You do not own it — the code, the domain, or the hosting is controlled by someone you no longer work with.

That last one catches people out badly. Before anything else, confirm you control your domain registration. Everything else can be rebuilt. A domain someone else owns is leverage over your entire business.

Two things to insist on, whoever builds it:

You can edit the content. Prices, text, photos, hours, without calling anyone. Have them show you, on a call, before you sign off.

You own everything. Domain in your name, code in your account, hosting on your billing. Not "managed for you" in a way you cannot unwind.

Get those two right and even an imperfect rebuild stays yours. Get them wrong and you are back here in three years having the same conversation.