Most sites people want to replace only need repairing.
Rebuilding is the expensive answer and it is usually the wrong one. Here is how to work out which you are looking at.
The question nobody asks first
What is actually wrong. Not what you dislike looking at, but what is failing: nobody finds it, or people find it and leave, or you cannot change a price without ringing somebody.
Those are three different faults with three different repairs, and only one of them is ever solved by a fresh design.
Repair is usually enough
If the pages say roughly the right things and the addresses have been the same for a while, keeping them is worth real money. Whatever standing they have built up is attached to those addresses, not to the design.
What gets repaired is underneath: speed, structure, the words a machine reads, and the listing. None of that requires anybody to redraw a page.
When rebuilding is genuinely right
When the platform makes the necessary fixes impossible, when it is unreadable on a phone, or when the business it describes no longer exists.
A shop that now sells something else has a content problem no repair reaches. That is a rebuild, and it should be called one.
The cost of throwing it away
A rebuild resets the addresses unless somebody is careful, and every address that changes without a redirect loses whatever it had earned.
This is the part agencies skip when they quote a rebuild, because it is invisible until the traffic drops the month after launch.
Questions worth asking
How do I know if my site is too old?
Age is not the measure. Open it on your phone: if it loads before you get bored and you can read it without pinching, it is not too old. If you cannot change a price yourself, that is the real problem and it is not about age.
My designer says it needs rebuilding. Are they wrong?
Not necessarily, and they may be right for reasons they have not explained well. Ask which of the three faults it fixes. If the answer is only that it will look better, you are buying a look.
Will I lose my Google position if I rebuild?
You can, and it is the most common own goal in this trade. Every address that changes needs a redirect to its replacement. Done properly the loss is small and temporary; skipped entirely, it is neither.
Will you work on something another studio made?
Yes, and most of the work here is exactly that. If the platform makes the necessary repairs impossible we say so at the start, rather than billing monthly for work it will not allow.
What does a repair usually involve?
Reading what is there, fixing what stops it being found, writing the pages that answer questions nobody answered, and finishing the listing. Almost none of it is visible, which is why it is undersold.
Send the address and we will tell you which of the three faults you have, and whether it needs a rebuild or a repair. Get a free audit.
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