"Let's just rebuild it" is the easiest thing an agency can say. Sometimes it is the right answer. Often it is not. A good clean-up keeps your content, your search rankings and a big part of your budget. A lot of the sites that reach us were built by someone who has since gone quiet, and most of them turn out to need a fix, not a fresh start. Here is how to tell which one you have.
Signs a fix is enough
1. It is slow, but the design still works
Slow sites are usually caused by heavy images, too many plugins, no caching or cheap hosting. All of that can be fixed without touching a pixel of your design.
2. One plugin keeps breaking things
Two plugins fighting, or one that broke after an update, is a fix, not a rebuild. We find the conflict, replace or patch the plugin and make sure the next update does not break it again.
3. The checkout or a form stopped working
A broken checkout or contact form is almost always a setting, an expired key or a plugin update. It is quick to fix and should be fixed today: every hour it stays broken costs you orders or leads.
4. You want one new feature
A booking step, a new product option, a different listing flow: these can be added with a small custom plugin or a child theme, without starting over.
Signs a rebuild is the better choice
5. Every change breaks something else
If the theme has been edited directly for years and nobody knows what does what, each fix creates two new problems. At some point a clean base is simply cheaper.
6. The site cannot do what the business needs now
If you started with a simple site and now need a marketplace, logins or an app, the old setup may just not fit, however well it is patched.
7. It is built on something nobody updates any more
An abandoned theme or page builder is a security risk that grows every month. Moving to a supported base is the safe choice.
What we do first
Before anyone says rebuild, we take a free look at your site. You get a plain answer in writing: what is wrong, what it costs to fix and whether a rebuild is really worth it.
You keep your content and your rankings whenever we can save them. Starting over is the last option, not the first.
Is your site slow, broken or just not doing what you need? Ask us for a free look.