The hidden cost of not updating your website

Whether your website has been sitting dormant for years, or you’re wondering if it’s worth keeping your current site up-to-date, this article is for you.

This article will shed some light on the limitations of an outdated website, the benefits of updating your site, as well as how you might identify the changes that need to be made. It is important to consider if you are getting the most out of your site.

What are the limitations of my website being outdated?

One area that problems often come up is the speed and performance of your website. These issues can be related to load times and user experience. It is important to have a site that loads quickly, to avoid frustrating the people visiting. This, along with other aspects of poor performance (e.g. content shifting on your page), can lead to higher bounce rates, as visitors leave to find a more user-friendly site.

Security risks are another key problem with older websites. Websites that have not been regularly updated are often poorly protected against threats. Due to this lack of protection, these sites are more susceptible to being hacked, with can cause major issues for the sites, as well as data breaches. Being behind on security can also mean that a site isn’t GDPR-compliant, which puts you at risk of needing to pay legal penalties.

Website page SEO (search engine optimisation) and responsiveness are also negatively impacted on many older websites. Some sites may not be compatible with advanced SEO tools, potentially leading to a reduced website ranking. A low search engine ranking often means lower website traffic, which isn’t ideal. Another thing that contributes to a low number of visits is when older websites are not compatible with mobile devices. It is important to cater to mobile users, and a non-responsive website can be difficult to access on a phone or tablet.

What are some of the ways that I can update my website?

At this point, you may be thinking, “that’s great, but how can I improve my website?”. One potential option would be to instruct an expert to conduct a website audit, as it would uncover the limitations of your current site, and make your next steps clear. It will provide you with a thorough review of your website and highlight areas that are causing slow load times (such as unoptimised images), consider where your site is lacking in usability, and assess the compatibility of your CMS (content management system), hosting, and plugins with modern standards.

Hiring a development expert to refactor your website’s code and adding image optimisation functionality to the backend of your site are a great starting point to improve the loading speed of your site, thereby increasing user experience. Your site can be adapted to be responsive, so that it can be viewed on a wider range of devices, and this will increase the number of satisfied visitors you will receive.

Your site can be made more secure by make sure that everything is updated, with the latest security patches installed. Additionally, up-to-date sites are easier to maintain, so there is a lower risk of security issues developing further down the line. As well as improving the security of your site, acting on a website audit can boost your website page SEO. Quick, responsive, secure websites are favoured by search engines, and you can integrate advanced SEO tools much easier into modern sites.

What are the risks of allowing my site to remain outdated?

If you don’t assess your site’s suitability, you will struggle to identify the issues that your site is facing, meaning that you never make any changes to enhance your website’s performance. This could lead to the following issues…

• Poor SEO & User Experience: If you don’t address these issues, you will struggle to increase your website traffic. This can lead to your competitors outpacing you in visibility, and therefore gaining customers more easily.
• Negative Brand Reputation: If your website’s design is dated, it can make your company seem out of touch, which may prompt customers to question your ability to innovate. Also, poor aesthetics, combined with sub-par functionality, can create doubt in your user’s minds regarding your company’s standards.
• Weak Security: If you suffer a cyber-attack and there is a data breach, this can negatively impact consumer trust around your company. Not only could your reputation suffer, but you may be faced with fines or lawsuits for not complying with data protection regulations.
• Expensive Maintenance: If your website is outdated, it is likely to run into more issues that need to be addressed than with a newer site. If a technology used on your site is no longer supported, it can be expensive and complicated to make fixes, meaning that doing nothing may be more expensive than getting your site up-to-date.

How can This Is Fever help me to update my website?

Coming to This is Fever for help updating your site will allow you total peace of mind. One way in which the team could help, would be through a website audit, as mentioned earlier. Not only will the Fever team outline the performance of your site by measuring your core web vitals and identifying SEO issues, they will also look at it from a design and user exercise perspective. This will allow them to suggest improvements to the user journey on your site, amongst other things.

In fact, the Fever team will supply you with a detailed document that outlines all the findings of the website audit, as well as pitching recommendations for improvement based on what they have found. Other parts of a website audit from This is Fever include a carbon impact analysis, which outlines the amount of carbon your website uses, as well as accessibility and compliance checks.

In the past, the team have worked on many projects where they had to completely rethink a website from the ground up. An example of this is shown in our Out and About case study, but here’s a brief overview. The Fever team revamped the Out and About site, turning it from something resembling a brochure site, to the eCommerce Site of the Year 2023! They implemented appealing design choices, improved the navigation of the site, and integrated well-suited eCommerce features, allowing the site to function more efficiently and better suit customers’ needs.

Although the Out and About site is not an example of a Fever website audit in action, it is a clear example of the benefits of choosing This is Fever to update your website. Rather than just modernising the site, the team made sure to identify existing issues, and ensure that they were resolved, as well as enhancing usability across the board.

If you’re interested in what This is Fever can do for your site, whether you feel that it is outdated, or just in need of some extra attention, don’t hesitate to get in touch.