NEW: Fred Schebesta

Your website sucks, but there are still some pots of gold on it that everyone comments about and you don’t want to kill their shine. What do you do?

Overhaul it or just upgrade it?

I have about seven websites running, and they all have golden spots but a few black holes too. The reason this happens has to do with my first principle of just getting a website up and running, and seeing what happens.

If it made some sales, it’s got some potential. If it died in the arse, you can dump it. But the first website needs to be that test pilot that gives some users grief but delivers to others exactly what they need.

Decision 1
Figure out what the jewels on your website were?

If you haven’t figured that out yet, it’s not time to rebuild. Save your pennies and make a few imagery modifications, add a few links and push users to the areas of your website that you think might gain interest.

Keep the test running. Note down just generally what has tended to provide the best conversions and what has got comments from users.

Better still, if you have struck upon some viral elements or written a niche bit of content that is getting a huge amount of search engine traffic, keep that and build more on to it.

Remember it doesn’t have to be perfect, it just needs to be live and getting feedback.

Decision 2
Do you have the cash?

If you don’t have the budget to make a better website this time around, keep saving your pennies and incrementally invest in the site.

If you rebuild a site it should be a bigger and better investment than before because you have the insights of what your customers want and you are upgrading these parts.

If you are rebuilding the site just for the sake of fixing some problems but pretty much keeping the same functionality, I would pause and wait a bit more. I would advise that you want to be the big gorilla in your online niche, not just a little possum hanging out with their mates.

Vision your website as the best in the industry and work towards it. Ask yourself these three questions:

1. Which website is the best in the market?
2. What am I doing better?
3. What do I need to do to take steps to be the best?

If you have two of the above covered, then keeping chipping away and rebuild it later. Perhaps just launch a free blog and start testing out those new ideas you had for your site.

Alternatively just register an $8 .com domain name, install some off the shelf software with a few mods and plonk it on some cheap hosting and see what happens!

Fred Schebesta’s company Freestyle Media is an established innovative online marketing agency specialises in building search engine friendly corporate websites and running online marketing campaigns.

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