Problem, named

Seven signs your website is too old, and what each one is costing you

SAM COGGIN · SYDEX · 30 AUG 2026

If your website went up more than five or six years ago and has barely changed since, it is almost certainly losing you work right now. Not because it looks dated, though it does, but because buyers cannot find it, and the AI assistants they ask never mention you. Here are the seven signs that matter, and what each one costs.

1. It struggles on a phone

Well over half of local service searches happen on a phone, usually at the exact moment someone needs a trade. If your site needs pinching and zooming, buyers leave in seconds and ring the next name on the list. Google also ranks phone-hostile sites lower for everyone, even people searching on a laptop.

2. There are no prices anywhere

Buyers in 2026 expect a number before they ring. A site with no prices reads as "expensive and evasive", and it gives Google and the AI assistants nothing to quote. The businesses that publish prices get recommended by name. That is not a theory, you can test it yourself: ask ChatGPT for a good electrician in your town and look at why it picks who it picks.

3. You cannot update it yourself, and neither can anyone else

Built by someone who has moved on, logins lost, maybe an old agency still holding the domain. Every year it sits frozen it drifts further behind, and search engines notice a site where nothing ever changes.

4. Search for your trade and your town, and you are not there

The single most honest test. If page one is your competitors and directories, that page of results is work being handed to other people daily. Local searches are made by people ready to buy.

5. Ask ChatGPT who to hire, and it names someone else

People now ask AI assistants for recommendations the way they used to ask a neighbour. The assistants answer from whichever local website explains the business best: services, prices, area, reviews, in a structure machines can read. Old websites carry none of that, so the assistants recommend someone else, word for word, every time they are asked.

6. Enquiries mean "phone us during work hours"

A buyer who has decided at 9pm wants to send the job in now: what needs doing, a photo, their postcode. If your site offers a phone number and an email address, that buyer is on a competitor's quote form before you open in the morning.

7. You have no idea what the site is doing

No numbers, no idea how many people visited, what they searched, or what it earned. A working website reports on itself: visitors, leads and rankings, in plain English. If you cannot see the numbers, nobody is looking at them, and nobody is improving them.

What fixing it properly looks like

Not a lick of paint. A rebuild that does four jobs in order: the site rebuilt properly in your branding, made to pull traffic from Google and the AI assistants, that traffic turned into priced enquiries, and a system behind it that runs the jobs and reports the numbers daily. That is the standard now, and it costs less than most agencies charge for the paint. I charge £2,950 for the rebuild and £295 a month to run it, published, same for everyone.