Every couple of years, a small business owner emails us with the same opening line: "I think we need a new website." About half the time, they do. The other half, what they actually need is two thousand dollars of cleanup, not fifteen thousand dollars of rebuild. This is how we tell the difference.

The six questions, ordered roughly

Take a coffee, open your site on your phone, and answer these honestly. If you answer "yes" to any of the first three, you probably need a rebuild. If it's only the last three, you can usually get away with targeted fixes.

1. Does your site embarrass you when you share it?

Not just "I'd change a few things." Actually embarrass you. Do you avoid putting the URL on your business cards? Do you describe it on sales calls before you send the link? Have you said the words "just ignore the…" in the last six months?

If yes — rebuild. Your website is the first impression for most prospects, and shame is a tax you can't afford to keep paying.

2. Is it physically broken on mobile?

Pull it up on your phone. Try to fill out a form. Try to tap the navigation. Try to read a paragraph without zooming. If any of those is annoying, you're losing customers right now and you don't know it.

Shame is a tax. You can't afford to keep paying it.

3. Has your business meaningfully changed since the site was built?

New services. New locations. A different ideal customer. A new partner. A rebrand. If the "About" page describes a business that no longer exists, the rest of the site probably does too.

4. Is it slow?

Run a quick check at pagespeed.web.dev. If your homepage scores under 60 on mobile, that's a real problem. Google ranks slow sites lower, and visitors bounce faster than you think.

5. Can you (or your team) actually update it?

If updating a phone number requires "asking the web guy" and waiting three days, you're going to put off doing it — and then small things compound.

6. Is it built on something abandoned?

Old custom code with no documentation. A WordPress site running themes that haven't been updated in five years. Platform aging is the silent killer.

The thing nobody tells you

Web designers want to build new sites. We get paid more, the work is more interesting, and the deliverable is more impressive. So the bias in the industry is toward "rebuild." That bias is fine when it's true. It's a problem when it isn't.

We'll tell you which side you're on in the first phone call. If you don't need a rebuild, we'll say so. If you do, we'll explain why and what it costs. Either way, you leave the call knowing more than you did walking in.

— J.H.