The Cost of Not Updating Your Website

Lost leads from an ageing site

An outdated site loses enquiries through mechanisms you can check yourself. It loads slowly on mobile, so some visitors leave before they see anything. It is hard to use on a phone, so forms are abandoned. It looks old next to competitors, so buyers doubt that the business is active. And it often lacks what buyers now expect: prices or price ranges, online booking, clear proof of work. Each of these shows up in your analytics as visits that do not become contacts.

• Mobile load time and Core Web Vitals in Search Console
• Share of visits on mobile versus share of enquiries from mobile
• Form abandonment and visits to the contact page without a submission
• Content that is out of date: old prices, staff who left, services no longer offered
• Missing booking, pricing or proof that competitors show

Security and compliance exposure

An old site often runs on software that no longer gets security updates: an old PHP version, abandoned plugins, a theme nobody maintains. Each month that passes, known vulnerabilities accumulate. A breach costs clean-up, downtime, possibly a report to IMY if personal data is affected, and damage to trust. Compliance also moves: cookie consent, accessibility requirements and privacy notices written years ago may no longer meet today's rules. Our guides to the risks of running an old website and an outdated PHP version explain the mechanics.

Rebuild cost grows with time

Waiting rarely makes the eventual update cheaper. The longer a site goes without updates, the bigger the jump to a current version: plugins that can no longer be upgraded must be replaced, content has piled up without structure, and integrations built on old APIs stop working. What could have been a series of small updates becomes a rebuild. The same applies to content: years of unstructured pages take longer to migrate than a well-kept site.

Your own cost-of-waiting worksheet

You do not need market statistics to estimate this. Use your own figures and a cautious assumption, and write the assumption down so others can challenge it.

1. Monthly website visits (from analytics)
2. Monthly enquiries from the website (forms, calls, bookings)
3. Share of enquiries that become customers, from your CRM or memory
4. Average value of a customer in the first year
5. A cautious assumption: how many more enquiries per month a working site would bring — start with a small number
6. Monthly cost of waiting = extra enquiries × win rate × customer value
7. Add a risk item: the cost of one week offline or one breach clean-up, weighed by how exposed the site is

Compare the monthly cost of waiting with the cost of the update spread over its useful life. If even a cautious assumption shows waiting costs more, the decision is made. If it does not, waiting may be right — and that is a legitimate result. Our guide to writing a business case turns this into a one-page decision document.

Small steps that buy time

If a full update is not possible now, reduce the risk while you plan. Update what can be updated, remove unused plugins, fix the worst mobile problems, correct out-of-date content, and make sure backups work. A website health audit, from 4 990 kr, gives you a prioritised list of what is urgent and what can wait. When not to buy from us: if your site is on a maintained platform, loads fast and brings enquiries, it does not need updating just because it is a few years old — keep maintaining it.

• Website health auditA prioritised review of security, speed and content.
• Financing a website or appWays to spread the cost of an update.
• Book a callSend us your site and we tell you what is urgent.

Frequently asked questions