Skip to content 
Is your website holding you back?
Your homepage takes more than FIVE seconds to load, the blog hasn’t been updated in TWO years, and the design looks like it was made over a DECADE AGO.
Sound familiar?
These are clear signs it’s time to update your website. Given that 75% of consumers judge a company’s credibility by its site design, your website doesn’t stand a chance if it’s outdated, slow, and in dire need of a visual pick-me-up.
An outdated website kills your conversions, affects your overall SEO efforts, and makes your brand untrustworthy. If you continue to rely on your retro website, it’ll do your brand more harm than good.
Let’s explore the 10 most obvious red flags of outdated websites and how to fix them.
Getting Around Your Website Is Hard
One of the first signs of an outdated website is difficult navigation. While loading speed and responsiveness are two critical factors in navigation, that’s not the only reason your customers will bounce. The most obvious, but typically overlooked part, is your navigation, which includes clunky menus and poor site structure.
Why Navigation Matters
According to the data published by Clutch in 2025, 38% of people look at a website’s page layout or navigational links when visiting it for the first time. If your customers can’t find what they want in a few clicks, they’ll turn away, probably for good.
That means broken links, randomly placed menus, and confused layouts have no place on your website. Your customers expect a simple, intuitive navigation, especially on smaller screens like mobile and tablets.
Likewise, trends in color palettes, typography, and imagery evolve constantly. If your site still sports design elements from 2020, like skeuomorphic buttons or pixelated stock photos, people will view your brand as behind the times. They want to see your visuals reflect your current brand identity.
Another issue you need to consider is compatibility. Older sites typically rely on deprecated HTML tags, Flash plugins, or outdated JavaScript libraries that newer browsers no longer support. Test your site across the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge to identify compatibility issues.
What Can You Do
Start with a mobile-first redesign of your website that works flawlessly across screens. Make sure to keep your menu labels simple, clear, and logical. The best practice is to group similar products or services under crystal clear categories.
Here’s an example:
Home > Men’s Clothing > Hoodies
Keeping it simple, with no clutter or confusing dropdowns, can help your customers find what they want easily. They’ll stick around longer, and that’ll help boost your conversions.
Your Content Is Over the Top and Confusing
Content is the king. But use too much of it, and you risk losing your customers. Whether you sell products or services, your website needs clear, concise, and keyword-optimized content.
Why It Matters
If your website has a wall of text occupying every corner with industry jargon and blog posts that are more than TWO years old, your visitors will turn away in a blink.
When your would-be customers come to your website, they expect clarity. They don’t want to dig through fluff. That’s another sign that it’s time to update your website.
What Can You Do
Break down those walls of text into smaller, easy-to-read paragraphs and use bullets wherever possible. People look at lists with bullets more often (70%) than those without bullets (55%).
When updating website content, use bullet points, short sentences, and simple language to explain your services and products. Make it easy to scan and understand.
Update your content regularly, especially your blog and FAQs. Not just your customers, Google, too, loves fresh, relevant, and keyword-optimized content. Additionally, when updating website content, write for your target audience and speak their language.
Instead of saying “expert-led payment gateway integration,” say, “add any payment gateway you want to your store.” The less jargon you use, the more your content will resonate with your visitors, encouraging them to make a purchase.
Missing or Misleading Calls to Action (CTAs)
Are your visitors left guessing what to do next? Most outdated websites lack clear calls to action or CTAs, which is one of the reasons people bounce.
Why It Matters
No visible CTAs means no direction, leads, sales, or engagement. You might be getting a ton of traffic, but without the right CTAs, you’re missing out on a large fraction of those leads. If you want a better ROI for your marketing campaigns, you need strong CTAs.
What Can You Do
Keep your CTA buttons obvious, direct, and easy to click. Don’t hide them in long paragraphs or at the bottom of a page. Use full-page welcome gates on your landing pages. They may be a bit aggressive, but they can convert 15% to 25% of your traffic into email subscribers. That’s a crazy good conversion rate.
Personalized CTAs also convert 202% better than basic CTAs. That’s because they focus more on your target audience than on making a sale or getting a signup. Make sure your CTAs align with what the customers are looking for, and you’ll end up getting more leads.
If you’re developing a WooCommerce store, speak with your designers about where and how the CTAs will be placed. WooCommerce experts can recommend the right plugins or even build a custom one to help you manage the CTAs.
Stale or Outdated Content
Most outdated websites have old product details, expired discounts, and even wrong contact info. That’s another sign you need website upgrades immediately.
Why It Matters
Search engines, like Google, want fresh, accurate, and people-first content. If your site hasn’t been updated in months, Google and other search engines are less likely to display it in local search results. On top of that, if customers find broken links or outdated FAQs and product or service descriptions, it’ll lead to nothing but frustration.
Moreover, unsecured sites (HTTP instead of HTTPS) now trigger browser warnings and may deter your visitors. Even if you have HTTPS, loading some resources (images, scripts) over HTTP leads to “mixed content” alerts. Install a valid SSL certificate and make sure all assets load securely.
What Can You Do
Make content reviews a part of your monthly or quarterly SEO audits. Focus on checking your product descriptions, service details, FAQs, and blog for any irrelevant, outdated, or poor-quality content.
Keep your coupons, offers, and product prices updated. One way to stay on top of this is to use a CMS like WordPress, which makes content editing easy. It lets you update website content without touching code.
If your store is based on WordPress, and the backend feels confusing or cluttered, hire a team of WooCommerce pros to upgrade and maintain it. They’ll keep your site up-to-date, not just the content, making sure you stay ahead of your competitors.
Irrelevant Search Results
What do you do when you visit an online shop? Search for what you want? That’s probably what your customers will do when they land on your website. They’ll search for a specific product, and if they can’t find it, they’ll bounce.
Why It Matters
Nearly four out of every five online consumers (43%) go directly to the search bar upon landing on a retail website. If your site search pulls up the wrong products, or nothing at all, they will turn to your competitors.
What Can You Do
Start by configuring your internal search tool. If you use WooCommerce, upgrade your product filters to speed up the search. Advanced product filters allow your users to search for anything they want using price, category, brand, color, size, rating, and availability.
Make sure to tag all your product pages correctly. Use clean titles, optimize your metadata, and place every product in the right category. For WooCommerce store owners, this might mean working with experts who can upgrade the backend to make your search feature faster and more accurate.
Your Website Takes Ages to Load
Slow loading speed is one of the surefire signs that it’s time to update your website. Outdated websites gather a lot of baggage, which can slow your store down.
Why It Matters
The average web page load time is 2.5 seconds on desktop and 8.6 seconds on mobile. If your website loads slower than that, you’re looking at increased bounce rate and lower conversions. Today, consumers want a lightning-fast website, and your website had better be.
What Can You Do
First, use a tool like GTmetrix or Google PageSpeed Insights to see how fast your website actually is. Once you know what’s taking it so long to load, you can take the right steps to speed things up.
Optimizing your website for speed typically includes:
- Compressing images without affecting their quality.
- Enabling browser and server-side caching.
- Upgrading or moving to a better hosting provider.
- Using a Content Delivery Network (CDN).
- Integrating a lightweight theme.
- And cleaning up your plugins and themes.
Speed optimization typically involves tech-heavy website upgrades. In other words, you’re better off hiring a developer who knows your CMS inside out.
The Developer Is On Your Speed Dial
Do you call your developer often? If you’ve to call your developer even to fix a headline or a product image, it’s a sign that it’s time to update your website.
Why It Matters
Building your online store using an open-source, scalable solution like WooCommerce gives you one advantage: you can easily update the content yourself. But if you can’t do that, you’re working with either a bloated or an outdated website. It’s not only inconvenient but also costly.
What Can You Do
If you’re on Shopify or any other CMS, move to something like WooCommerce. It’s open source, highly customizable, and built for easy maintenance. With drag-and-drop builders like Gutenberg and Elementor, you can make edits without touching code.
Train your team to manage content updates, blogs, and product info on their own. This can help you bring our overall maintenance costs under control. And if your website is too complicated, you can always look for a managed maintenance plan.
Too Many PDFs or Inaccessible Content
Is your site built for everyone? Typically, an outdated website relies heavily on PDFs and other content that’s not accessible or mobile-friendly. That’s two red flags for your website.
Why It Matters
According to WebAIM, when they tested the top million websites around the world, 94.8% of home pages had detected WCAG 2 failures.
An accessible site benefits everyone, including people with disabilities. If you haven’t implemented alt text for images, ARIA labels for interactive elements, or proper color contrast, you’re excluding a segment of your audience. In some cases, it could also mean you’re violating ADA compliance.
What Can You Do
Start with a full accessibility audit of your website. If it’s an outdated website with a lot of PDFs, convert them into accessible web pages. Web pages are easier to update, faster to load, and more SEO-friendly.
Follow the latest Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). This typically includes using proper heading tags, alt text for images, and high-contrast colors. Also, you’ll need to add keyboard navigation and screen-reader support.
Making your website accessible requires technical expertise. Consider hiring a team of developers to audit your online store first, recommend the changes, and implement them.
Your Website’s SEO Is Busted
Search engine optimization, aka SEO, has come a long way. That means most outdated websites lack proper on-site SEO optimization. If yours falls into this group, you’re missing out on a ton of web traffic.
Why It Matters
Organic search results drive traffic to your website. To put that in perspective, the #1 result in Google’s organic search results has an average CTR of 27.6%. It’s 10x more likely to receive a click compared to a page in the #10 spot. In short, an outdated website with virtually zero SEO is holding you back.
What Can You Do
Whenever you make website upgrades, be sure to follow SEO best practices:
- Add meta titles and descriptions.
- Create clean, keyword-friendly URLs.
- Use proper heading tags (H1, H2, H3…).
- Submit an XML sitemap to Google.
- Add structured data for products, reviews, or articles.
Your Website Is Not Mobile-Friendly
We’re fast becoming a mobile-first world. Unfortunately, outdated websites often lack responsive web design, meaning they can’t work as seamlessly on smaller screens.
Why It Matters
In 2024, over 60% of the web traffic came from mobile phones. But that’s bad news for your website if it’s not optimized for mobile. You are potentially losing two-thirds of your target audience.
On top of this, Google also uses mobile-first indexing, which means your mobile site gets ranked. If it’s not responsive, you’re not just frustrating users, you’re losing visibility.
What Can You Do
If your website isn’t too old, you can go for a responsive redesign. But for outdated websites, rebuilding using a mobile-first approach is usually the best option. After that, test your website across devices, including iPhone, iPad, Android, and tablets.
You’ll also need to check how menus, forms, images, and CTAs behave. All these elements should work flawlessly on different screens. If required, switch to a mobile-friendly CMS like WordPress, which is easy to use on all screens, even on the bank end.
FAQs about Website Content Upgrades
How often should I update my website content?
Ideally, you should update it every 30 to 90 days. This includes blogs, product info, and service descriptions. If your website doesn’t have a blog, start one now. It’s instrumental in updating your website content.
What are the risks of keeping an outdated website?
An outdated website affects your brand image, brings down conversions, and also opens up security risks. You’ll also miss out on ranking opportunities since search engines favor mobile-optimized, fast, and regularly updated sites.
Is it better to redesign or just make minor website upgrades?
If your structure is solid and your site just needs speed or content fixes, targeted website upgrades may be enough. But if your site is hard to update, non-responsive, or looks outdated, a full redesign may save time and money in the long run.
What tools can I use to check if my site is outdated?
You can use PageSpeed Insights to test speed, and Ahrefs Webmaster Tools or Screaming Frog for SEO and structure. If any of these tools flag multiple issues, it’s time to update your website.
Revamp Your Outdated Website Now
Your website is your first impression, and if it’s outdated, slow, and confusing, it’ll cause more harm than good. With these ten hacks, you can upgrade your website, making it fast, clean, SEO-friendly, and conversion-focused.
The fix isn’t complicated, especially if you hire a team of pros. CoSpark is a digital agency specializing in WooCommerce development. If your website runs on WordPress, we can help you upgrade, maintain, and scale it. We can also help you migrate to WooCommerce from other platforms.
