My Website Has Gotten Worse – What Went Wrong?
Updated: 6 days ago
Have you ever scrolled through your company’s website and noticed…something isn’t quite right?
Websites decay slowly. A misguided feature added on a whim here, a broken image layout there, a completely forgotten mobile view—and suddenly, you realize your website got worse and your polished web presence turned into a clunker moving downhill at rapid speed.
A deteriorating website quietly drains your brand’s credibility and loses you more business than you realize. It’s the exact reason some companies give up entirely and hide behind a Linktree, missing out on massive value (but that’s a conversation for another day).
Your website is your digital front door. It’s often the first thing a prospect sees, and if it’s falling apart, it’s the first thing that sends them running to a competitor. Nearly 95% of first impressions come down strictly to design—meaning a cruddy layout turns people away before they even read a single word of your pitch.
But just because your site is currently lying broken on the floor like Alex Murphy in RoboCop doesn't mean you can't build a cyborg. You just need to know what went wrong so you can bring it back to life.
Did You Check the Expiration Date?
Unlike our old friend Ron Popeil’s Showtime Rotisserie, websites are not a “set it and forget it” piece of hardware. As a general rule of thumb, websites need a major refresh or overhaul every two to three years. This is not news business owners enjoy hearing, but it’s reality.
You might still be clutching that iPhone 11 from seven years ago, but your website won’t hold up that long. Ignore the cracked screen and dying battery long enough, and the whole system eventually crashes.
Web standards evolve quickly, design trends shift, and if you're on WordPress, outdated plugins stop functioning and start inviting security risks.
And yes, overhauling a site takes time and money. But you can dramatically extend its lifespan by doing a routine, monthly “health check". Here’s what to look for:
Load Speed: Are massive hero images or video backgrounds making pages drag? Going from a 1-second load time to 3 seconds increases your bounce rate by over 30%—people simply won't wait for your media to catch up.
Broken Links: Did a deleted page or product leave behind a dead link?
Screen Sizes: Does the site actually render cleanly on an Android, an iPhone, and a widescreen monitor?
Plugin & Theme Security: Are backend tools updated, patched, and actually playing nice together?
Customer Walkthrough: Can a brand-new visitor actually buy your product or contact you without hitting a roadblock?
Too Many Cooks Spoil the Brand
Spreading around website work is excellent for cross-training your team. You’re building a deep roster of website knowledge and skillsets. But the pendulum swings both ways. When too many people have backend access, brand consistency dies a slow death.
Every color that isn’t quite right, every random font that pops up, and every rogue image alignment erodes customer trust. You rarely get a redo online—one frustrating interaction is usually all it takes to send 90% of your visitors over to your rival.
Have you ever looked for a restaurant’s menu online, found a broken PDF, and ended up going somewhere else? That’s customers lost before you even notice, all because the site looks unpolished. Brand consistency requires constant detail, orientation, and discipline. This is where those monthly health checks come back into play.
While I’m never against building website knowledge on your team’s bench, it’s paramount to have one designated lead website manager. They don’t need to be an expert coder or designer, but they do need to understand your brand, know how the backend works, and guard the keys.
Sometimes businesses simply don’t have the bandwidth to designate that lead person internally. It’s a gap I step into often for clients—because when no one has the time to manage the site or translate requests back and forth, updates get handed off to a web team with zero context.
The Ol’ Web Developer Translation Gap
I love working with great web developers and agencies. I’ve been a part of them myself. They are technical wizards who identify digital and tech trends before the rest of us.
But just because you have an awesome web dev team supporting you doesn’t mean it’s a one way street. You need to understand how to correctly hand-off web updates and handle the review.
Typically, web developers process information literally—it’s their job. If you hand off vague ideas and assume they’ll fill in the blanks, you’re going to be disappointed. You need to know how to speak the web developer’s language, understand how they work, and follow their procedures.
Example of a Bad Update Request:
“Our About Us page needs a new image at the top with our team in it. You should have a link to our pictures folder.”
Why this fails: You’re forcing (and paying) a developer to play detective in your Google Drive, guessing which picture is current, which people are actually on the team, and hoping you have the right image size. That’s billable hours out of your pocket for them to guess. You left too much grey area.
Example of a Good Update Request:
“Could your team please update the hero image at the top of our About Us page ([insert link])? I’ve attached the file we’d like to use. If it isn't sized correctly, let me know and I’ll send a revised file.”
Why this works: Specificity.
No one is a mind reader. Miscommunication between business logic and technical execution is one of the fastest ways to end up with a site that technically functions, but completely misses the mark for your customers.
The Great Developer Ghosting
A classic small business horror story: You wake up one morning, and the original web developer who built your site has vanished.
Cue the eerie fog and distant air-siren...
Maybe the developer changed careers. Maybe the agency phased out some clients. Or maybe—after years of radio silence—they simply stopped responding.
It usually starts small—a simple copy request goes completely ignored. Suddenly...a critical plugin fails, a domain renewal notice bounces, the screen goes white, your site goes down, and you realize you're trapped in a Silent Hill nightmare with no map, no flashlight, and zero admin logins.
When a website sits untouched for years, it's already in a shallow grave. If you hire someone to build or update your site, ensure every password, registrar login, and backend credential is documented and held by your team from day one. And remember to keep in touch with this extremely important team or individual.
Get a Plan in Place. Ask for Help When You Need It.
A laundry list of pending website updates usually isn't caused by a lack of care—it’s a lack of time and technical translation.
For a small fee, you can hire a third-party liaison to get projects completed. I realize this sounds like a strange service, but it’s by far my most popular one. What might seem like annoying, time-consuming work to you is actually the stuff people like me love to do.
Having someone who speaks fluent business and fluent developer ensures your vision gets translated accurately, updates stay on schedule, and nothing falls through the cracks.
You don’t need to carry that burden alone, so don’t be afraid to pass it off.
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