When somebody on Courtenay Street pulls out their phone to check whether your business is open, what they see in the next three seconds decides whether they walk in or scroll past. Your website is the first conversation you have with most of your customers, and an old, slow or broken site is a conversation that ends before it starts.
Below are the five signs we see most often on websites we're asked to rescue. If two or more of these match yours, you are losing trade you don't even know you're losing.
1. It fails on a mobile phone
Take your phone out and open your website right now. If you have to pinch and zoom to read body copy, if buttons are stacked too tightly to tap accurately, or if the menu turns into a mess at the top of the screen, the site is failing on the device most people are using to find you. Mobile traffic has been the majority share for years, and Google indexes the mobile version of your site by default. A modern build is mobile-first by design — laid out for a 375-pixel screen first and adapted upwards, not the other way around.
We are ready to talk things through!
Contact Here2. It is slower than a Friday afternoon on the A380
Patience online is measured in seconds, not minutes. If your homepage takes longer than three seconds to render, around half of mobile visitors leave before they ever see your phone number. Slow sites are usually slow for the same handful of reasons: oversized images served in the wrong format, bloated code from too many plugins, and cheap shared hosting. We build on our own ShoutFast CMS infrastructure and consistently score 95+ on Google PageSpeed for sites we host. That number isn't a vanity metric — it feeds directly into Core Web Vitals, which feed directly into rankings.
3. It no longer reflects your business
Has your service list changed since the website went live? Have you added a new product line, dropped one that wasn't paying its way, taken on staff or moved premises? Sites we audit in Newton Abbot routinely have phone numbers from a previous landline, opening hours from before a refurbishment, photos of staff who left two years ago. Every one of those mismatches is a small dent in trust. A redesign is the moment to bring the site back into alignment with the business you actually run today.
4. You're invisible on local Google searches
When somebody in Kingsteignton, Wolborough or Decoy types "[your trade] in Newton Abbot" into Google, do you appear in the local pack — that block of three businesses with a map? If you don't, your local SEO is the issue. The fix is rarely one big change. It's a steady programme of work: a fully optimised Google Business Profile, consistent name/address/phone across UK directories, location-specific content for the towns you genuinely serve, real reviews from real customers, and a website that loads quickly enough for Google to crawl efficiently.
5. It has gaps in basic security
If your URL still starts with http:// rather than https://, browsers display a "Not Secure" warning before the visitor sees a single word of your copy. Beyond the SSL certificate, an unmaintained WordPress install picks up vulnerabilities every month — outdated core, abandoned plugins, weak admin passwords. We've taken on Devon sites where the previous developer had not logged in for two years. A professional rebuild puts the site on a hosting platform with daily backups, a web application firewall, and a maintenance routine that keeps the engine clean.
What a redesign actually looks like
A redesign isn't a fresh coat of paint. It is a structural review of how the site reads, how it loads, how it ranks, and how easily you can update it yourself. We start with a free audit, talk through what's working and what isn't, and quote honestly. Our starter websites begin at £250 for sole traders and small local services. Ongoing work is covered by a £300 per month retainer — hosting, content updates, local SEO and support — month-to-month with no twelve-month contract.
If two or more of the signs above match your site, the kindest thing you can do for your business is have an honest conversation about it. Call or WhatsApp 07887 988780 and we'll book a slot.