Should I Revise or Rebuild My Website? A Guide to Decision-Making
A website should be a useful tool for the communities and stakeholder who nonprofits serve—as well as an easy lift for nonprofit staff to manage. However, a website can easily feel like a burden when it’s out of date, inflexible, and hard to use. Even worse, your end users may not be having the experience they expect with modern websites or can’t find what they need.
When faced with a challenging website, many organizations struggle with making a choice about whether to revise what they have or start over and completely rebuild their site. A well-functioning website supports business goals, provides a great user experience, and is easy to maintain. But if your site is outdated or difficult to manage, a redesign may be necessary.
Both options involve substantial resources, cost, and time. Making the right decision is critical to ensure any investment is worth the effort.
In a recent webinar led by Tech Impact Chief Digital Officer Marcus Iannozzi, we walked through a structured approach to deciding whether a website needs a refresh or a full rebuild. We provided questions to consider along a set of key factors to help guide your decision making.
Key Factors to Consider
Before making any decisions, assess your website across these core areas:
- Business Goals
- Content
- Design
- User Experience
- Usability
- Infrastructure
- Security
- Accessibility
- Search Engine Optimization
While these topics do not represent all of the considerations you might need to make, they represent a good set of fundamental benchmarks against which to compare your own digital properties.
1. Business Goals
Your website should directly support your organization’s mission and your audiences. Consider:
- Is your website aligned to support your organization’s goals?
- Does your website meet the needs of your priority audiences?
- Is your website getting the desired traffic and conversions?
Revise if: Your site has a flexible framework that allows for updates to page layouts and menus.
Rebuild if: You're locked into a rigid system that limits your ability to adapt and restructure content.
2. Content
Accurate, organized, and engaging content is critical to an effective and useful website. Consider:
- Is your web content up to date?
- Can you easily embed media on your website?
- Can you easily categorize and organize information for users?
- Can you create landing pages that are flexible and visually appealing?
Revise if: You have content editing tools and the ability to make connections between different pieces of content.
Rebuild if: Your site is too simplistic or rigid to support dynamic content needs, such as categorizing similar content.
3. Design
Visual design is a critical part of user experience. Your site should be visually appealing and align with your brand. Consider:
- Is the design modern and appealing with visual interest?
- Are the design elements, such as font, colors, and imagery, consistent with your brand?
- Is the design clean or cluttered?
- How easy is it for you (or a vendor) to make changes to your site’s look and feel?
Revise if: Your site looks relatively modern but needs minor tweaks to make it more up to date.
Rebuild if: Poor design is impacting usability and overall experience, even if the look and feel can be easily updated.
4. User Experience (UX)
Good UX ensures visitors find what they need quickly. There are many dimensions to user experience, and a lot of challenges can be addressed with improved content strategy. Consider:
- Is your site easy to navigate?
- Can users search for and locate content easily?
- Can users scan pages on your website and find what they need quickly?
Revise if: Your issues are about how content or your sitemap is organized and you have the ability to update it.
Rebuild if: The entire structure isn’t working and your challenges are greater than just reorganizing content.
5. Usability
Usability focuses on technical aspects of a website and issues are often related to how a site was built or structured. Consider:
- Does your site load quickly?
- Is it mobile-friendly and responsive to a variety of screen sizes?
- Are there broken links or frequent 404 error messages?
- Is your site cached or served behind a content delivery network (CDN)?
Revise if: Your main issue is dead end pages, which are fixable with content updates.
Rebuild if: Structural problems are causing usability issues.
6. Infrastructure
A modern website should be built on a scalable and secure platform. The foundation of your site will either limit or enhance your ability to make changes. Consider:
- Was your site built within the last 3-4 years?
- Is it on a modern Content Management System (CMS), such as WordPress, Wix, or Squarespace?
- Can you find support or vendors easily?
Revise if: Your CMS is modern and allows you to complete major changes on the front end without needing to start over or build new elements.
Rebuild if: Your platform is outdated and limiting. Rebuilding in a modern CMS will likely resolve most of your issues.
7. Security
Cybersecurity is critical but often ignored because of its technicality. Consider:
- Does your site have SSL?
- Can you apply security updates to your site easily, without the updates breaking your site?
- Do you have Turing Tests (CAPTCHA , etc.) on forms?
- Do you have two-factor authentication for admin login?
- Do you require complex passwords for user accounts?
Revise if: You can apply security updates to your CSM easily. Most security issues can be handled outside of your site, except the update to your CMS.
Rebuild if: Security updates regularly break the site.
8. Accessibility
A website should be inclusive for all users. Some accessibility best practices are content related, and some require support from a development team. Consider:
- Have you tested your site for accessibility?
- Does your website follow WCAG 2.2 (Level A compliance at least) guidelines?
- Do all images and media have alt text?
- Is the reading level appropriate for your audience?
- Does your visual design and color palette consider color contract and color blindness?
Revise if: Most issues are related to content updates and optimizing the uses of color.
Rebuild if: Major design or structural issues prevent accessibility improvements, such as not being able to add alt text to images and media, and screen readers not being able to parse your site.
9. SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Ranking high on search engine results requires on- and off-site SEO best practices. Good SEO is achieved through content and more technical mitigations. Consider:
- How are you currently ranked by search engines?
- Are you using relevant keywords strategically in page titles and headings?
- Do you have link partnerships with your partners?
- Do you update your homepage every week?
- Do you have tools on your site to manage SEO at the page level?
Revise if: SEO can be improved through content optimization.
Rebuild if: Structural problems prevent effective SEO implementation, such as performance issues and poor markup.
In most cases, small improvements can go a long way in enhancing your website’s effectiveness. However, if your site is struggling across multiple areas—such as usability, infrastructure, and accessibility—it may be time for a full rebuild.
Still unsure? Let’s talk.