Most companies do not come to us for their first website, but for their second: the one you build once you have understood what a website is really for. Here are the objective signs it is time, each with a test you can run yourself, right now, in five minutes.
1. You no longer dare to share your URL
The simplest test of all. If you hesitate for a second before writing your website address in an email signature or on a business card, your site is hurting your credibility instead of serving it.
The test: show your website to three loyal clients and ask them, without prompting, what it says about your company. Their silences are worth an audit report.
2. It generates no enquiries
A website is not a brochure, it is a salesperson working around the clock. If it produces no calls, no form submissions, no quote requests, it was not designed to convert. That is the core problem, and it is fixable.
The test: count the inbound enquiries attributable to the site over the past six months. If you cannot answer, that is already an answer: nothing is measured.
3. You depend on someone to change a comma
Every edit goes through an agency or the nephew who built the site? You lose time and money on every update. A well-designed modern CMS makes you autonomous: text, images, pages, everything is edited in a few clicks.
The test: time the gap between "we need to change this opening time" and the change going live. More than a day? You have a tooling problem, not a people problem.
4. It is unreadable on mobile
More than half of your visitors arrive on a phone. If your site forces them to pinch and zoom, they leave, and your competitors welcome them.
The test: open your site on your own phone and try to find your phone number, your opening hours and your contact form in under thirty seconds. Responsive design stopped being optional ten years ago.
5. Your competitors have rebuilt theirs
Compare three recent competitor websites with yours. If the gap jumps out at you, it jumps out at your prospects too. In B2B as in B2C, image counts before the first meeting.
The test: search for your trade + your city and open the first five results side by side with your site. No indulgence.
6. It runs on worn-out technology
Plugins breaking with every update, security alerts, unexplained slowness: the symptoms of a site built by accumulation. At that point, repairing often costs more than rebuilding properly.
The test: run your site through PageSpeed Insights, Google's free tool. Look especially at the mobile Core Web Vitals: if they are in the red, your visitors feel it before you do.
7. Your business has changed, your site has not
New services, new positioning, new team: if your website tells the story of your company five years ago, it is working against you.
The test: list your three most profitable services today, then check that each has a real page on your site. The gap is often brutal.
What a redesign is not
Rebuilding your website does not mean repainting the old one. Changing the colours and photos of a badly structured site is decorating a problem. A real redesign starts from the fundamentals: who must find this site, to do what, and how you measure it. Design comes after, in service of those answers. That is what separates a cosmetic expense from a commercial investment.
Where to start, in the right order
- 1. Goals: what the site must produce (quote requests, applications, bookings) and for which audience. One sentence per goal, written down, shared.
- 2. Content: which services to highlight, which proof to show, which existing pages to keep. Content commands structure, never the other way round.
- 3. Structure and design: the page layouts, the visitor journey, then and only then the screens.
- 4. Migration: carrying over your addresses and existing visibility is prepared from day one, not the night before launch.
A supplier who shows you mockups before asking these questions is decorating, not designing.
Realistic budget and timing
To size the investment: an entry-level site starts at EUR 5,000, a custom site at EUR 12,000; full details in our article on prices. On the calendar side, count 2 to 3 weeks for an entry-level package and about twelve weeks for custom work, from first call to launch. And in Brussels, the Prime Digitalisation grant can cover part of the eligible expenses, provided the application is filed before you start.
The recap checklist
- I share my URL without hesitation
- The site produces measurable enquiries
- My team edits content without a contractor
- Everything is readable and usable on a phone
- The site stands comparison with my direct competitors
- PageSpeed does not turn red
- The site tells my business today, not five years ago
Two or three unchecked boxes are enough. The good news: a well-run redesign takes about twelve weeks, is partly financed by the Prime Digitalisation grant in Brussels, and happens without losing your existing visibility.
Want an outside eye before deciding? Get a first opinion on your website. We will have visited it before we answer.