Seven signs
- It's hard to use on a phone. Most customers meet you on a phone first. If they have to pinch and zoom, or the buttons are too small to tap, many of them leave.
- It's slow. Every extra second of loading is a chance for a customer to go back and pick someone else.
- You can't change it yourself, or you're afraid to. If updating your hours means a phone call, or one plug-in update might break the whole thing, the site is working against you.
- Customers can't do anything on it. If a visitor can read about you but can't book, register, request a quote or pay, you're doing that work by phone and email instead.
- It doesn't connect to anything. If form requests arrive by email and get typed again into a spreadsheet or another app, that's time and mistakes every week.
- AI assistants can't read it. More customers ask ChatGPT and other assistants who to call. If your information loads through scripts, has no structured data or blocks AI crawlers, you may not be part of the answer. How customers find businesses through ChatGPT explains why.
- It shows its age. Old photos, old prices, a copyright year from years ago or a “Not secure” warning in the browser tell customers nobody is minding the store.
What's worth keeping
Replacing a website doesn't mean starting from nothing. Your domain name, the content that still works, photos you own, your reviews and listings, and the pages search engines already send people to are all worth carrying over. A careful rebuild keeps those pages reachable at their old addresses, so you don't lose the ground you've already gained.
Why it's worth doing now
Technology is moving faster than it ever has, and a site that's already behind falls further every year. The upside is that a new site no longer has to be a brochure. It can be the front door to the software that runs your business: booking, payments and customer accounts, all in one system.
Where ETG Works fits
ETG Works builds websites as part of custom business software, and a website on its own is a fine place to start. A short call is enough to see what's worth keeping.