Most people asking this question do not need to spend thousands straight away. They need to know whether the thing they already have is holding the business back, or whether it is simply a bit dated and perfectly fine for now. Those are very different problems, and only one of them is worth paying to fix this year.

Here is the test I would run before spending anything.

Open your website on your phone

Not your laptop. Your phone, on mobile data, standing up, the way a customer would. Count how many seconds pass before you can read something useful. If it is more than about three, that is costing you people, because most of them will not wait.

Then try to find your own phone number. If you have to pinch, zoom, or scroll past three screens of text to get to it, so does everybody else.

Ask what a stranger would conclude

Look at the first screen only, and ask what someone who has never met you would work out from it. They should know what you do, where you do it, and roughly who you do it for. If they cannot, the problem is the words, not the design, and words are cheaper to fix.

Check whether the photos are yours

  • If the images are stock photos of other people's work, that is worth changing.
  • If they are your own jobs, shot badly, that is worth reshooting before rebuilding.
  • If they are your own jobs, shot well, you may be in better shape than you think.

In trades especially, the photographs do most of the selling. I have seen plain websites do perfectly well because the work shown on them was undeniable, and I have seen expensive websites fail because they showed nothing real at all.

So what is the answer?

If your site loads quickly, says what you do, shows your real work, and lets someone contact you in one tap, you probably need a tidy up rather than a rebuild. Fix the words, replace the photos, and spend the rest of the money somewhere else.

If it is slow, unclear on a phone, and shows work that is years behind what you are capable of now, that is when a rebuild pays for itself. The website is not the business, but for a lot of people it is the first impression of it, and a first impression that undersells you is expensive in a quiet way.

If you are not sure which one you are, send me the link. I will tell you honestly, and I do enjoy looking at website builds. If the answer is a tidy up, I will talk you through why.

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