What an old website quietly costs you
"It still works" is the sentence we hear before a rebuild. The page loads. The hours are mostly right. Someone can find the phone number if they scroll.
That can still be an expensive site. The losses do not show up as a vendor invoice. They show up as a quiet week.
Calls you never hear about
People open the site on a phone, wait, and leave. You do not get a notification that says "possible customer gave up." You get fewer inquiries and a story about the algorithm.
We will not pretend we know your exact lost-revenue number. If mobile traffic is most of your visits and the homepage is clumsy, you are paying something. Fix the first screen and the form before you buy ads into that page.
Search that fades instead of breaking
Google has cared about speed and mobile usability for years. An old theme that barely squeezes onto a phone does not fail overnight. Rankings slide. You notice when a competitor's new site sits above you for your own business name.
Content that is hard to edit stays stale. Stale pages do not help you for the phrases people type now.
Maintenance that gets more expensive
Old PHP, old plugins, old builders. Simple text changes start requiring a developer who charges more because nobody wants to touch the code. A security hole sits open because the update breaks the header.
Monthly website plans are cheaper on a current stack. On a relic, you are paying someone to keep a dying install alive until it cannot.
Trust in about a second
You know the business is fine. A stranger only has the site. Dated type, stretched logos, and a 2016 slideshow read as "maybe they are dated too." That is unfair and it is still how people choose a plumber they have never met.
Tools you cannot bolt on
The new booking app, the CRM, the payment form: they expect a site that can take a script or an embed without falling over. When they cannot, your staff copies leads from email into a spreadsheet. That has a cost. It just is not on the web invoice.
When waiting is fine
The site is under two years old, you can edit it, phones load it, forms arrive, and you are not losing sleep. Keep maintaining it. You do not need a project for its own sake.
When waiting is a habit
Unsupported platform. A hack in the last year. Mobile bounce that feels like a brick wall. You cannot change the homepage without a ticket. Competitors redid their sites and yours looks like the archive.
That is refresh or rebuild territory. Refresh starts at $1,500 when the bones are usable. A new site starts at $3,000.
If you want a straight read, request a quote. Send the URL. We will tell you if you should spend money or just update the hours.