15 signs you need a new website, and when a refresh is enough

The sales rep is about to send a link to a new prospect and writes first: “Ignore the website, it’s a bit old.” The marketing lead waits a week for an agency to change a phone number, because nobody internally dares touch the theme. Those are two of the most reliable signs that a website has stopped working for the business. Most companies feel it long before they act, and meanwhile the site costs them customers, time and credibility.

The good news is that many problems can be solved without a new site. Some are fixed with new copy and images, others with a technical clean-up. This guide groups the 15 signs we see most often into three categories and gives you a scoring table, so you can see whether you are looking at a refresh, a redesign or an entirely new website.

How do you know if you need a new website?

Ask yourselves two questions. First: is the site costing us something today, in lost enquiries, wasted time or a poor impression? Second: can the problem be solved within the current platform, or is the foundation itself the problem? The signs below help you answer. The technical signs weigh the most, because they usually cannot be fixed without a rebuild.

Technical signs: is your website outdated?

1. It works poorly on mobile. Text needs zooming, buttons are hard to hit, or content runs off the edge. Google judges you on the mobile version.
2. It is slow. Pages take more than a couple of seconds to show the main content, and Core Web Vitals in Search Console show red.
3. The platform cannot be updated. The theme or key plugins have been abandoned by their developers, or an update would break the site, so you skip it.
4. There are security problems. Browser warnings, spam through the forms, unknown administrator accounts or a site that has been hacked.
5. You cannot edit it yourselves. Even small changes require one specific person or an order with an agency.

Signs 2 and 3 often go together. A site with 30 plugins is slow because each plugin loads its own files, and it cannot be updated because nobody knows which ones depend on each other. Our guide to website speed shows how to measure it in five minutes.

Business signs: is the website working for you?

1. It does not describe what you sell today. New services are missing, old ones remain, and the priorities fit the company of five years ago.
2. It generates few or no enquiries. The traffic may be there, but the form rarely gets filled in.
3. Sales apologise for it. The site gets sent with a caveat or not at all.
4. It cannot talk to your systems. Booking, CRM, accounting or inventory have to be handled manually on the side.
5. Competitors look better and work better. Customers compare before they call.

Sign 9 is the one we see underestimated most often. When bookings arrive as emails that someone types into a calendar, or orders have to be copied into e-conomic, you pay for the website every single day in staff hours. A site with integrations built in removes that work entirely, and this is often where the investment pays back fastest.

User signs: do visitors find what they are looking for?

1. Users leave quickly. Many visits end on the first page, especially from mobile.
2. Customers call to ask about things that are on the site. That means the information cannot be found.
3. The content is outdated. Broken links, old news, staff who have left and photos from another era.
4. It is not accessible. Poor contrast, images without alt text and forms that cannot be used with a keyboard.
5. Cookies and personal data are handled incorrectly. No real consent, a reject button hidden away, or forms without data processing agreements.

The last two signs also have a legal side. The Danish Accessibility Act applies from 28 June 2025 to webshops and other consumer services, among others, with micro-enterprises exempt, and the Danish cookie rules require rejecting to be as easy as accepting. Read more in our guides to the Accessibility Act and cookie banner rules, and check the specifics for your company with a lawyer.

How bad is it? Score your website

Give each of the 15 signs 0 points if it does not apply, 1 point if it partly applies and 2 points if it fully applies. The technical signs 1–5 count double, because they determine whether the problems can be solved without a rebuild. That gives a maximum of 40 points.

Redesign or refresh: which should you choose?

The score gives you a direction. The decision also depends on what will happen to the business in the coming years. If you are about to add booking, a customer portal or multiple languages, there is rarely any point in refreshing a platform that cannot carry it. The table below shows the situations we meet most often and what we typically recommend.

What does a new website cost compared with a refresh?

A refresh with new copy, images and adjustments to a few templates typically costs about the same as a simple site from a freelancer, roughly DKK 5,000–15,000, plus your own time for copy. A new standard site from an agency typically runs DKK 15,000–40,000, and a bespoke site with several languages and integrations DKK 50,000–200,000 or more. With us, a new website starts at DKK 18,000 plus DKK 600 a month for hosting and running costs. See the details in how much a website costs.

Remember to count the hidden costs of keeping the old site: hours spent working around it, paid plugins, emergency repairs after failed updates and enquiries that never arrived. Over three years they are often larger than the price of a new site.

Which redesign myths should you watch out for?

• “A new website will fix our sales problem.” It makes selling easier, but the offer, prices and follow-up also have to hold up.
• “We have to start content from scratch.” The pages that rank and convert today are your most valuable assets. Bring them along.
• “A redesign is a one-off project.” A site starts ageing the day it launches. Set aside time and budget for continuous improvement.
• “The more features, the better.” Every feature has to be maintained. Start with what supports your goals.
• “Design matters most.” Structure, copy and speed more often decide whether a visitor becomes a customer.

How do you get started with a new website?

If you want help with step 3, we do a UX audit of the current site with concrete recommendations. If you land on a new site, our guide to a new website step by step describes the whole process, and our page on website redesign shows how we approach it. You can also go straight to getting a fixed price within 24 hours.