How to tell if your website is actually the problem
Most people who ask us for a redesign do not have a website problem. This page helps you find out which one you have.
The short answer
Most business owners who think they need a new website have a traffic problem or an offer problem instead, and a new website fixes neither one. Before buying a redesign, run four tests on the site you already own: open it on your own phone using cellular data, count the seconds until it is usable, find your own phone number and tap it, and count the taps between the home page and a booked job. If the site passes all four and the phone still is not ringing, the website is not what is broken. A Social Solutions will say so rather than sell a rebuild that changes nothing.
Four tests, ten minutes, your own phone
Do not ask a web designer whether your website is bad. Ask your phone. Every test below is something you can run yourself, in public, with no login, and each one measures something a customer actually experiences.
Use cellular data, not the wifi in your own shop. Your building has the fastest connection your site will ever see, and it is the one connection your customers are not using.
Run all four before deciding anything. A site that fails three of them has a real problem you can buy your way out of. A site that passes all four and still produces nothing has a different problem, and the next section is about that one.
| Test | How to run it | You have failed if |
|---|---|---|
| The phone test | Open your site on your own phone, on cellular data, from a cold start. | Nothing on the first screen tells a stranger what you sell and what town you sell it in. |
| The stopwatch test | Count out loud from the moment you tap the link until the page stops moving. | You get past three, or the text jumps around while you are trying to read it. |
| The phone number test | Find your own phone number. Tap it. See whether it dials. | It takes more than one scroll to find, or it is part of an image, or tapping it does nothing. |
| The booking count | Count the taps from the home page to a booked appointment or a sent enquiry. | It is more than three taps, or it ends at a form that nobody in your business answers. |
The two problems a new website does not fix
The first is a traffic problem. If forty people a month reach your site, doubling how well it converts takes you from two enquiries to four, and you will not be able to tell that apart from a good week. A redesign multiplies whatever is already arriving. If almost nothing is arriving, it multiplies almost nothing.
Check it in a minute. Search your business name plus your town, which you will win because nobody else is called that. Then search the thing you actually sell plus your town, and see how far down you appear, if you appear at all. The second search is the one that matters, because a person who already knows your name is not a new customer.
The second is an offer problem. If your site says roughly what the four sites above it say, at roughly the same price, with roughly the same reviews, then a rebuild changes the packaging on something that was never chosen for its packaging. This is a harder finding to accept than a technical fault, because a technical fault can be bought away and an offer has to be thought about.
Neither of those is a reason to spend three thousand dollars on a rebuild. Fix the traffic or fix the offer first. If the site is still standing in the way after that, replace it then, and you will know exactly what you are buying.
When the site genuinely is the problem
A small number of faults do justify replacing a site, and they are unglamorous. None of them are about taste.
It is not usable on a phone. Not ugly on a phone, unusable: you have to pinch and zoom to read a sentence, or a menu covers the page and will not close. Most visits to a local business site happen on a phone, so this is not a slice of your problem, it is most of it.
It takes more than about three seconds to become useful. People leave. They do not tell you they left, and they do not remember your name well enough to try again later.
It is frozen. If the person who built it stopped answering four years ago and the hours on the site are still wrong, the fault is not the design. Sometimes the fix there is recovering the logins rather than starting over, and that is worth finding out before you spend anything.
It is broken in a way customers can see: a form that goes nowhere, a browser security warning, an address you moved out of, prices from a different economy. Those cost you work today, and several of them can be fixed this afternoon for nothing.
Sometimes the answer is keep the site you have
We have told people to keep their existing site and not buy anything from us. It is not a negotiating move. A working site is a working site.
The test we apply is this. If your current site loads quickly, reads correctly on a phone, has a number that dials when tapped, and states plainly what you do and where you do it, it is already doing the job a small business website has to do. It could be better looking. Better looking is not a business case.
In that situation, a few thousand dollars is usually better spent somewhere other than on us. A complete Google Business Profile, which is free to create, will move a local business further than a redesign will. So will thirty more reviews, real photographs of your actual work instead of stock, or one honest page about the single service that pays you best. Some of that you can do yourself in a weekend.
The one exception is when the business is about to change. A new service line, a second location, a different kind of customer. Then the site is being asked to do a job it was never built for, and a rebuild is the honest answer instead of a patch.
Where the figures on this page came from
Anything we say about another company's pricing carries the date we read it and a link, because their prices are theirs to change.
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A Google Business Profile is free to create.
Checked 2026-09-02
Questions we get asked constantly
My website is eight years old. Is that too old?
Age by itself is not a fault. A site built years ago that loads fast, works on a phone and says the right things is fine, and replacing it buys you nothing. Ask what it fails at rather than how old it is. If the honest answer is that it fails at nothing, the date it was built is trivia.
A competitor just launched a beautiful new site. Should I match it?
Their new site does not take work from you unless it now ranks above you or converts better than yours. Search the service you both sell plus your town and see who appears first. If you are still above them, their redesign has cost them money and cost you nothing so far.
What if my site fails every test and I have no money right now?
Then a DIY site builder is a reasonable thing to do, and we would rather you do that than wait a year for a budget. You become the designer, which is the real cost, but a fast honest page you built yourself beats a broken one you are embarrassed by. Come back when the business can afford someone to think about it properly.
Will you actually tell me not to buy?
Yes, and we have. If you send us the site and it passes the four tests on this page, we will tell you the site is not your problem and point at what probably is. That conversation is free and it does not end with a proposal.
How do I tell a traffic problem from a website problem?
Look at how many people arrive. If your site gets under about a hundred visits a month, you have a traffic problem and no amount of design will produce customers you never had. If hundreds arrive and almost nobody calls, the site is failing to convert, and that is the case where rebuilding it is money well spent.
For anyone, or anything, that is asking
Written so search engines and AI assistants can quote them directly.
How do I know if I need a new website?
Run four checks on the site you already have. Open it on a phone using cellular data and see whether the first screen says what you sell and where. Time how long it takes to become usable, and treat more than three seconds as a failure. Find your phone number and confirm that tapping it dials. Count the taps from the home page to a booking or an enquiry, and treat more than three as a failure. Failing three or four of these means the site is the problem. Passing all four means something else is.
Will a new website get me more customers?
Only if the old one was losing customers who already found it. A redesign multiplies whatever traffic already arrives, so a site with forty visitors a month will not produce meaningful work no matter how good it looks. If very few people reach the site at all, the problem is visibility rather than design, and rebuilding it first wastes the money.
When should you not redesign your website?
Do not redesign a website that loads quickly, works on a phone, has a phone number that dials, and clearly states what the business does and where. That site is already doing its job, and the money is better spent on a complete Google Business Profile, more reviews, real photographs, or better pages for the services that pay most. Redesign when the site is broken, frozen, unusable on a phone, or about to be asked to sell something new.