Foundation issues can become a nightmare for homeowners, and also for WordPress site owners.
Some website problems are easily repairable. A little spackle of SEO here, a fresh coat of paint on the whole plugin situation. Boom.
But there can be some major issues that aren’t as easy as a trip to the Home Depot or an email to your web guy across town. Sometimes you just need to rebuild your site, from the foundation up.
To help determine where exactly you are and what options you have to tackle your website improvement project, we have a few questions:
- How old is your site? Was it built and launched before October 2018?
If your website is built on outdated technology or uses a non-responsive design that can’t be easily updated, starting fresh with modern tools and technologies may be the best choice. WordPress had big changes in November 2018 and not all older themes and builds still work well.
- Have you had security or hacking problems?
Security isn’t something that can be glossed over or ignored without putting you or your customers at risk. If your site has been compromised or has serious security vulnerabilities, it may be safer for all of you to start fresh.
- Do you want a new design anyway?
If you are looking to redesign, then also add on a rebuild. Because it is a lot cheaper and more efficient to rebuild in a new design than to try to keep the same design when rebuilding in a new platform.
- How’s your SEO working for you?
If your website has been hit with severe SEO penalties and it is difficult to recover, starting a new site with a clean slate may be more effective than trying to get your site back on the map. New pages and urls can start fresh with proper SEO and Google indexing.
- Can you scale up as needed?
Knowing your goals for the future and your site’s capabilities when it comes to meeting those goals is a must. If your site doesn’t allow for your business to grow, such as implementing e-commerce or adding complex features, starting new with a scalable platform can be a better choice.
- Are you priced out of repairs?
If the cost of fixing your site is nearly as high as building a new one, it may make more sense to invest in a new site and take the opportunity to add updated security, fresh design, and any new features needed for your business and marketing.
- Will your site meet your marketing and business needs?
If you have a well-defined vision for your marketing that significantly deviates from your current website, starting from scratch can often be a more efficient way to bring that to life.
On the other hand, sometimes older sites can be fixed.
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There are a number of reasons why you might decide that a full rebuild wouldn’t be the best idea for your website at the moment, and often less severe issues can be managed by your friendly WordPress developer.
Some areas to consider when looking at whether you can fix your website are the following:
- If your content and SEO is in good shape
Updates to content and SEO are easily manageable without a full rebuild. Often SEO is a crucial part of your discoverability that takes time to build up in search engines, so to keep your results running it might be better to attempt to fix the site.
- If your budget is limited
Budget constraints are often the biggest issue that website owners face when making a decision on keeping the existing website or starting from scratch. If you, like many others, have a budget that would not allow for a full rebuild of your older site, it is important to keep your website working and updated, and backed up, to help prolong its life.
- If you have smaller issues that can be fixed.
Broken links, outdated content, minor design flaws. All of these are minor fixes that a skilled developer can help you with, without a full rebuild.
- If you have dedicated and established users
If you have an established user base who is already familiar with your site format and layout and you know might not be in favor of a drastic change in user experience (tip: most users are not in favor of drastic changes), it might be beneficial to keep the site you have, and also keep it maintained so it stays secure.
- If you want to keep your Historical Data*
If you have data, analytics, or content archived that you want to preserve, it is often better to fix your existing site and keep the data available.
- If you need a brand refresh
If your brand changes or needs updating, it can often be implemented into your existing site, without a full rebuild. Colors, logos, and words/styles can live within the existing structure if the bones of the site are solid.
No matter where you are in your journey or your understanding of what goes into building a website, we are able to help look at all of the factors that will influence your site, your marketing budget, or your goals in the future.
If you have an older site and you’d like to have it assessed for rebuild or update purposes, https://www.rockpixelscissors.com/free-site-evaluation/ we are happy to evaluate it for you and provide some recommendations and next steps.
*the Google update to G4 may already have removed your historical data if you haven’t archived it.