How Long Do Websites Last? (And When Should You Replace Them?)

[00:00:00]

Matt: When we make a website, how long will it last before it needs to be replaced? Now, according to Orbit Media, the average website lifespan for top marketing brands is two years and one month. Now, that is an incredibly short amount of time given the amount of effort and money that it takes to put together a professional, modern, and modern marketing website, which are usually fairly fancy.

But most websites are not part of the top marketing brands. So how long will their websites last? So we're gonna explore these c- this conversation in this episode. We're gonna be, like, taking a look at it, 'cause w- I have this conversation with my clients a lot, small to medium businesses. They're on a budget.

They're like, "Hey, how long is this gonna last? Do I need maintenance? Do I not?" Big conversation. So if this sounds interesting to you and you wanna support the show, you can go and check us out on that Patreon, leave a review or rating on your podcast app, join us in our Discord server, or share this with your friends, and you can get 20% off a Scrimba Pro plan.

You can find the link to do that in the show [00:01:00] description and the show notes with full details on how it works in the show notes on HTML All the Things .com. And so I have written, like, quite a detailed show note. It will be on the website, uh, as well. I'm not gonna get into every single nitty-gritty.

We'll be talking here for four hours because there's tons of considerations. Again, I have many phone calls with people, uh, and they, you know, you'll have a, a conversation where they're like, "Hey, like, you know, I'm a, I'm a car shop, and I, I wanna just be able to have people book appointments. How long is this gonna last?

Am I gonna have to be in a constant relationship with you?" Those are the type of questions that, you know, I get actually fairly often or talk to people about anyway. And so what does it mean? I figure we should, like, kind of set this apart or set this off or, with a, a specific definition I suppo- I suppose.

What does it actually mean for a website to last? And there's many considerations. You know, you, you have to take a look at what, what is working, the technical side of things. [00:02:00] Is there something there that's gonna break down? And that doesn't mean that something's actually going to physically break, but it's gonna look like it's broken if, for example, you buy a one-year license and the year lapses and you don't have a credit card there.

That's some sort of maintenance you're gonna have to do, where you're gonna have to have... make sure there's recurring, there's a recurring payment method there or you're paying for the year manually at the right time, things like that. Is the website still converting customers? So we have the technical side of things, but then we have the other side of things where, yeah, the website still loads and it works and you can see it and you can use it and you can even use the email forms, but unfortunately, it's no longer bringing us leads.

It used to bring us 10 leads a month, now it's bringing us one. What's going on here? Is that an industry problem or is that a website problem? And there's a lot of sort of what I call people conversations that happen w- in, in this, in this question of like how long is my website gonna last? Is it still representing the brand properly?

And I think that this is something that affects that, that two years and one month that we heard from Orbit Media, the average website [00:03:00] lifespan for the top marketing brands. Because their brand identity, their branding, like their branding itself, just the colors, the logo, sometimes even their name, oftentimes there's lots of mergers in those industries.

And so sometimes the brand won't be represented properly anymore by a website that was made even just one, one year ago. Heck, even, even one month ago if a merger just happened today. And again, mergers happen a lot Is it still maintainable by developers is another good question as well, and that's m- again, another technical question.

Do you have an old WordPress that hasn't been updated in a decade, and then you ask somebody, "Hey, I wanna do e-commerce on here." The developer looks at it and goes, "I'm gonna have to update everything." The instant they go to try to update stuff, you got major parts of the website that can't be updated, or when they do up- when it does update, it needs to be Band-Aided together.

You got a bunch of slop inside of the, inside of the database. And oftentimes it's like, hey, really this should be rebuilt because we're just gonna keep pushing forward, hitting a [00:04:00] problem at every step, trying to fix the problem, and we're Band-Aiding so many because there's so much legacy code, so many legacy pieces of this WordPress stack or just custom stack as well.

Joomla! is... Like anything, any sort of system, fully custom, there's gonna be legacy issues if you wait that long. And so is this thing still maintainable by developers is a great question as to whether or not your website is gonna last. Is it still competitive in the market? That's very, very comparable, if you will, to converting customers.

However, sometimes your website is converting great in a, in one specific niche. If you are into marketing and you are into analytics, your website might be converting amazingly in one state or one province in one town or city. But then you look and you go, "Oh my God, you know, we're getting a good amount of leads, but why are we only converting here when the rest of my competitors are converting everywhere?"

And so y- maybe your website has something very specific that that area looks for, that that area needs, but [00:05:00] you need to take a look at the market as a whole because you don't want it to dry up. That one lead in that one town or that one city, that's, you know, putting all your eggs in one basket. Maybe you're like, "Shoot, we have to do a bit of a redesign here," whether that's completely or partially in order to appeal to the other, the other people.

So that's another example of, you know, will my website last? There's a problem you might hit there And also, I want to just say one thing, and I th- it's kind of a conclusion of all of these, and that is that a website can still work, but will al- but, but can also still be failing the business. Nat actually says this a lot on his social medias where people are buying results.

They're not buying the website directly, and I'm paraphrasing what he's saying, but I 100% agree with it, is that sometimes you'll have a conversation with somebody, and you will argue, "I want that left align. No, right align. No, center. Right, left, center. Right, left, center. Right, left, center," for months. And I've done this.

I still do this. This happens all the time. But then you push the website out, and they don't want to pay me for maintenance, or they don't want to [00:06:00] pay me to look around at it anymore or, like, keep an eye out on the competition. So I'm out. They don't want to look at it because, "Oh, we paid that. Oh, okay, great, you know, it's done."

And then, then the website doesn't actually do anything for them. Maybe it gives them one lead a year, but unfortunately, websites are something that do need to evolve. Not the design necessarily, you know. Your website is still lasting if you're writing new blog posts, if you're changing your pricing, if you're adding new pages based upon template, page templates that were built before.

But I think that this is a kind of a good definition, if you will. I know it's a bit fluid, but this is the, the conversation that many web agencies that work with small to medium businesses will have when that question comes up or if that question comes up with their clients saying, "Hey, you know, should this...

Like, how long is this gonna last? Do I need to constantly have you on staff?"

Mikhail: Th- th- this kind of, like, leads right into the reason why I think mostly that people... that, uh, companies will change their website so [00:07:00] often, and that's because of the sales pitch from these marketers, like, uh, or w- agencies. the sales pitch is always this. There- it's never like, "Hey, we'll build you a new website."

That's never really th- like even brought up in the first, like, little while when you're talking to a, uh, a company. It's, "Okay, what are your sales now?" Right? "How much are you making? This is where I-- This is what I think are changes," and that could be like, you know, additions of SEO content, additions of, like, fixing, fixing certain things.

It could be, uh, you know, just marketing campaigns and potentially rebranding and doing a website refresh, Uh, the website refresh probably is a small part in that, but, uh, y- you sell the results, that's really the only thing that they should care about. And when you sell the results, you stop needing to discuss those little things that you're saying, like the left align and the right align.

Because at the end of the day, if they come back to you and be like, "Oh, I'm-- a little bit too left aligned for me," you're just like, [00:08:00] "It doesn't matter. That's not what we're doing here. We're doing here... What, what we're doing here is getting you 10% more sales, and if we don't get you 10% more sales, then we failed. And so, like, left align, right align does not matter. Like, don't even look at it. Don't worry about it. You can give us your feedback, great, what, what we really need is for you to get more sales." And at the end of the day, if you frame it like that, most companies will be like, "Okay, like, that, that, that's what we want." Whether that succeeds or not is Like, you know, like, uh, it, it, it is a risky bet to sell people on results and then deli- like deliver or not, like if you don't deliver. I've seen it be successful where, like, you, you take a look at their website, you take a look at their marketing, and you see where they have holes, and then when you're, when you're selling them, you sell them on the holes. Like, "Hey, you're, you're not doing this properly, you're not doing this properly, you're not doing this properly. We're gonna rebrand you. We're gonna d- create your website to be a little bit faster here." I, I've worked on a website that [00:09:00] was in the six figures because of this, because were looking at every point of loss, like every point of drop-off. They had an analytics dashboard where there was someone monitoring 24/7, and if they saw a slight drop-off, that meant X amount of dollars lost. And so as soon as you relate time, like a, a very strong factor of time, like, "Hey, uh, every hour we're making this much money, if we invest a- another $100,000 today, in two years we'll make like, you know, 10%, 30% more money on every hour These numbers start to make sense, and the rebrand start to make sense, and the marketing campaigns start to make sense because that's, from a perspective of a company and a marketing team and a sales team, that's all they're really looking at is like an analytics screen with numbers.

They're not even looking at the website most of the time. technical person's job. only looking at, "Hey, why is there-- why is this page specifically losing 10% more cl- customers? There's a [00:10:00] dr- 10% more drop-off than this page." And then they'll pass that information on to the technical team and be like, "Fix it

Matt: Well, what, what you're highlighting there is really the d- the, the idea that it, it takes, it takes a village, that kind of idea. It takes a village to make a website. And, and I don't mean every single website. Some people's websites are literally a business card where, "Hey, I'm open at this time, and this is my address.

Come to, you know, come to my business and, and buy cups," or, like, or buy whatever, right?

Mikhail: Mm-hmm

Matt: and, and it's not their primary method of, of marketing. Maybe their Google My Business card is their main thing, or maybe it's a physical billboard or something like that. But it does take a village to make websites at the caliber you were saying, 'cause if you really think about it, developers will focus on the maintainability and the security, basically the technical side of things, obviously, right?

You'll have your business owners that wanna focus on leads and sales And these are just generalizations, by the way, 'cause we have many business owners that will fight me on the alignment of text to this day. Uh, there's designers that focus on the [00:11:00] visual identity, and they want the exact right purple, the exact right green, the exact right shade of gray.

You know, you get that. And then your users are actually thrown in there too because they want good usability. They wanna trust the website. They don't, they don't want to have an issue when they try to log in, or if they book an appointment for that auto mechanic, they wanna make sure that they can actually get their car in that day.

They don't wanna have that lack of trust where, oh, the website broke on me once or even twice. That's it. I'm just gonna have to call in. And now that tool right there is, well, it's not working and it's not servicing the business. It's, in fact, it's, it's failing the business. I think the, the thing with a website too is really what we're highlighting here is you have to look at the scale of, of the website, and you have to take a look at, at that.

Because-- So, like, because I work in small, medium business, I don't do a lot of the things that you describe, Mike. Many of our clients don't even care about their analytics. Some will care about just sort of a, a standard Google Analytics [00:12:00] install, and they just care about page views and those type of things.

But many don't care about the specifics. They don't have the time, they don't have the money, and they don't have the expertise, and, uh, they n- they're not gonna spend the time learning the expertise to go through and check out AB testing, to check out how many people wa- clicked, clicked on this page and then actually clicked y- the contact button, the call to actions and things.

They don't care about that. They just wanna make sure it's more or less, is it technically working? Is it okay? You know, are users not complaining? Okay. And then they move on. And that's a, a symptom of those owners being in a business where they're wearing multiple hats. Some medium businesses can get quite large, and then they have many, many teams, but many medium businesses are, are still really scrappy in some areas.

You'll, you'll see that in businesses where maybe they need a factory or a warehouse side of things where they'll have a hundred people or I don't know what the official definition of a medium business is. Let's just say it's two hundred for the sake of conversation. [00:13:00] Maybe there's a hundred and twenty people in the warehouse, and then there's eighty people running everything else from the accounting through the brand identity to the logistics to the whatever.

And so you might have one website person. You might have one person that does all the marketing, and they outsource the website. And we've seen that before. And so y- that department, that marketing area, that website area of the business is running like a tiny business. It's running like someone who has to wear multiple hats because they don't have the ability to go, "Okay, I'll get my designer on this.

I'll get my brand identity guy on that. I'll get, like, I'll get her to do this. I'll get him to do th-" We don't-- They don't have that. It's, you know, the buck starts and stops with that one person. Maybe they'll call a contractor, and that's it.

Mikhail: But I, I think that's why, that's why agencies are so popular is because they, they give you a team of professionals. Like a lot of times an agency would be like, you know, a marketing person, a designer, a, uh, a website person, a content person. Like [00:14:00] you get, you get every part of the content pipeline, and then one person just manages them.

Like, so there's the point of contact at the company, whether it be the CEO or like the, the single marketing person or something like that. But the agency is responsible for all the different stuff on all the pipelines, and then depending on the level of trust with the agency, it depends on the approvals that, that are required to get stuff in.

But I, I think there's-- For small businesses, you're right. Like a lot of them just want like, "Hey, we just need like a, a static website. wanna have something where if people Google us, they can go somewhere." That's fair. Um, that's not to say that you can't sell them on the next level, if that makes sense.

Like I-

Matt: For sure

Mikhail: business could potentially benefit from like an agentic-- Not agentic. I, I'm too much into A-A-AI. An agency-type situation where they are just, "Hey, we'll take over this for you, w- we no longer like need approvals for everything. We are now-- Our goal, our sole [00:15:00] goal is to get another five cars into your lot, like into your, into your garage. And you tell us, like we're gonna... You know, tell us what you're, what, how many cars you're getting today, and then three months from now we're gonna evaluate that," and it was just gonna be a numbers game and be like, "If you're getting more, then we win, and it doesn't matter how we got there. It's j- it just matters that we've, we've established that our value is higher than what you've spent on us by a certain, a certain degree, and then you keep going."

But the other part of this is that like those aren't really what these, the, the, the hook was about. The hook was about the top marketing brands is like, which is, know, your Nikes and your, you know, big e-com stores and stuff like that, where there is a lot more incentive and, and reason to put this money into the entire, the pipeline, right?

Like there's, you, if you don't put the money in the pipeline, you could potentially be leaving all the money on the ta- on the table. Because there's so many people vying for eyeballs online it really only goes to the [00:16:00] best of the best at the top, at the, at the top level. So if you're not updating your website in two years and your competitor is, and you're not updating your marketing, uh, like plan in two years and your competitor is, you could be falling behind.

That's where I think at least the, the hook kind of goes to. Obviously small businesses, the timelines are very different than

Matt: For sure

Mikhail: think we'll talk about that later. But like, uh, it is a very competitive world out there in the top, for sure.

Matt: Well, when it comes to the topic, could you imagine going to the Nike website and seeing their branding from five years ago?

Mikhail: Yeah, it would

Matt: would be, you know, that would be absurd. Short of a few commonalities that are branded entity like the, the Nike swoop or the check mark, whatever,

Mikhail: Mm-hmm

Matt: you're not gonna see many things that are the same.

Mikhail: No

Matt: Even though it's still, to many, just a place to go buy their sneakers or to go buy a T-shirt online or to find their store 'cause they wanna shop in store in a Nike store, it, the identity of the website, the, [00:17:00] the brand identity starts to sort of show a visual age at that scale. And, and, and, and it, and it's jarring if a brand like that doesn't modernize quickly

Mikhail: It, is it jarring? That, that, that's my question. Like jar- I mean, jarring from the perspective of the, of the client, of the user of

Matt: Of the user, yes. Yeah

Mikhail: I'm not sure, I'm not sure if the user is the one that's going to be the most complain-- like, they would be the one complaining about familiarity in an e-commerce store, if that makes sense.

Like, I feel like if I come back to Nike five years from now or whatever Shopify store five years from now, and they have everything in the same layout that they had five years ago and I'm able to purchase the thing that I need, I'm not gonna care. personally, like I just think, okay, they're older, but like that's not gonna stop me from purchasing their product. I, I think that they do it is that rise up and there's certain things that the competitors do that they aren't [00:18:00] doing at that certain time, and then the marketing agency sees that and they're like, "Okay, we have to adapt to that," and then it's a cat and mouse game of like cons- consistently like looking at your competitors and making sure that you're playing the right search algorithms and you're playing the right things.

And I, I honestly think that the redesigns almost like a, a side thing that doesn't actually have much of a effect on the, uh, the sales of the company versus all the other stuff that they're doing on top of that, which is again, the marketing campaigns and the, uh, the, the different SEO techniques and potentially like th- differentiating the, how the categories work based on a competitor that's been successful recently.

Like, stuff like that I feel like has way more impact the, the redesigns that are, are, are still done every couple years. I still-- They still do it.

Matt: Right

Mikhail: I just don't know what the actual, like reasoning is for that. Maybe, maybe you're right. Maybe co- consumers would be like, "Fuck, what, what is this old ass Nike website?

I'm not buying from [00:19:00] this." I just, for myself, I don't see myself like going to that extreme for a purchasing decision.

Matt: I don't see myself going to that extreme, but it could be an, um, like a, a straight up marketing expert would probably be able to answer this question better, but it could be because it's the cat and mouse where the consumer doesn't really know what they want. They don't know if they want flat design or glass morphism or minimalism or whatever.

And as these trends come and go, I remember parallax and like overusing parallax was like an absolutely huge thing back maybe nine years ago or so. And I would say that sh- certainly, like I wouldn't, I wouldn't personally care as long as the website is responsive. Like that's a major jump from non-responsive to s- to res- to responsive.

That's a major, major, major, major change. I think the big, I think the big thing is, uh, how would I even describe this? Is it's like It's like, uh, y- the, the big brands are constantly [00:20:00] running ahead of, of what the user is expecting, but the user doesn't even know what they're expecting. They're just, "Oh, like, like, oh, it..."

Like, Nike's new. They might not even notice that Nike is, it has a new landing page today, but they're just kind of expecting that Nike is up on it, if that makes sense. It's part of the name. You're kind of, like, selling the name Nike. You're kind of selling the name Adidas, et cetera, Reebok, and, and, and I'm just using these sort of sneaker and sports brands as an example.

This goes outside of this as- uh, outside of that as well, uh, outside to many other markets, outside of sports and things. I, I would say too is that there is, there is sort of, um... Your market needs to be considered, if you will. So Best Buy Canada has certainly done some changes over the years, but Best Buy Canada is very, very focused on e-commerce, in my opinion.

And so unless I haven't noticed many cha- many major changes, I really haven't noticed many changes at all. I've noticed fixes for little things that haven't aligned right and things like that. [00:21:00] But for the most part, Best Buy Canada has just sort of kept it, "Hey, come buy this. Here's our sales. Here's this.

Here's that," and you kind of go in and you have a familiar experience each time. But they know their market. I'm not really expecting Best Buy to be anything more, because I'm usually rushing there for a sale or rushing there for a pre-order. I'm not rushing... I'm not going in there saying, you know, "I want to be wowed by the name that is Best Buy."

And that's not a, that's not a jab at Best Buy. I just don't think that the name... They're not a designer brand. Like, Nike is a designer brand. Best Buy is like, "What do you do there?" "I buy, I buy computers." "I buy a video game," or something like that. Like, the, the idea of Nike is different. Like, your... People aren't walking around with Best Buy price tag logos on their shirts unless they're employees.

But y- people are walking around with the Nike Swoosh. And so something like a Best Buy is, to, to your point, Mike, is gonna really fight for those SEO wins. There's gonna be a lot of stuff that's changing in the back end. [00:22:00] Again, there have been some changes to the Best Buy Canada website over the years.

But generally speaking, it's been really familiar and- It's again, because of that market where they don't ne- necessarily need a designer every day. And so the, th- their design will last years, maybe even a decade or a better part of a decade because people like me, my God, the PlayStation 6 is coming out.

I, I don't wanna see your stupid parallax, your sliders, your fancy video of like the new, the new Best Buy. Out of the way. Where's that preorder button? I have to get there before everybody else. I have to get there before it's no longer in stock. I have to get to the sign-in screen. I have to know what my Best Buy rewards are.

I have to know where my warranty information is. It's more utilitarian, and so that also plays a big role even in the big companies, 'cause obviously Best Buy's huge. Like I'm talking about just Best Buy Canada. There's Best Buy America, maybe they're in other places as well, I don't know.

Mikhail: Mm-hmm.

Matt: use Best Buy all the time, especially around the holidays and things like that for gifts and for sales and everything else, and [00:23:00] the familiarity is, the familiarity is like, you know, i- is appreciated there.

And so they would have less of that sort of branding or visual aging, if you will. And, and they would probably more suffer from framework or CMS aging, and so then they would have to have the developers constantly in there, right? Constantly in there. So like how long does a Best Buy website last? I mean visually, the better part of a decade without a developer there at absolute best a year, probably less.

Because they're gonna wanna take advantage of every single thing, 'cause they're paying probably hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars on campaigns on let's ju- let's just say Instagram, that's where I see the most often, their Instagram carousels. If I click, like if I'm like, "You know what? I do need a controller," and I click on that and that page doesn't work, the very next thing I'm doing personally, ebgames.ca, look the controller up.

Oh, it's the same price, purchase. And now Best [00:24:00] Buy just alerted me that I wanted something and they lost the sale. And so you can see how those... And that's just one, one example, but that you can see how like you need that, that technical, uh, technical I guess foundation, the technical strength, and so that's what they're really gonna, that's what they're gonna really strive for and that's what they're gonna really need.

However, someone who has arguably a similar system at a lower scale, like to touch on the small business side of things, I mean, we, we have, we've worked for people who they use e-commerce but only once a year, and it's because they do a holiday, uh, not donor, a holiday, um, like a, like a, a, a... What do you call it?

Like a- Yeah, like they, they, yeah, they're selling like a,

Mikhail: Okay.

Matt: like a calendar or they're selling like something as like for charity. It's like, "Hey, here's our holiday event thing. We're donating this to whatever charity." And they're doing like a, a, a fundraiser, if you will. I guess a holiday fundraiser is the best way to say it.

And so they use e-commerce once a year, and that's it. And so they have the same [00:25:00] e-commerce system that they've had for years and years and years, and then eventually their whole website replaced and the e-commerce website got replaced inside of it. And then that's it. Like, they just, now they're gonna use that same e-commerce system, and they'll probably keep using it until that website's done.

Like, they're not sitting there worrying about, "My God, if I, I need to advertise this." They're not at that scale. That's not where their main business is. You know, this is just something that they do. And so that system's probably gonna last a long time. It'll need some updates to make sure that the credit card handler that they're using will still allow them to use it.

Obviously, you can't just leave your stuff in, you know, version one forever when the software has moved on to version 10, especially with payment systems. But as long as they keep up with the security and the general maintenance, like, they're fine, and they don't, they don't care, uh, about, you know, having the fanciest...

Like, like for example, like, like cross-buy, for example, like, like some- that's something that like Best Buy and other major e-commerce websites will worry about, "Hey, can we try..." Like, if someone bought a controller, like we better try to cross, cross-sell them some, some [00:26:00] batteries if they bought an Xbox controller 'cause like they'll-- it uses double A batteries.

And it better not be triple A bat-- like, that's a huge thing. It better not be triple A batteries that appear on the cross-buy, on the cross-buy thing. Like, hey, you know, customers who bought an Xbox controller also bought... You don't wanna show triple A batteries. You wanna show double A batteries. It sounds like a really simple solution, but there's a science to that.

They know what they're doing. Oh, do they want a charging port? Hey, do they have an Xbox? Hey, are they, uh-- do they have a Fire Stick? You can, you can stream games from a Fire Stick, you know? And they, they know all these things. Amazon does it. Best Buy does it. All these large e-commerce websites, and that's where they're, that's where they're really gonna worry about that stuff.

That's where their website doesn't last. Like, could you imagine Amazon's like cross-buy, cross-sell systems from five years ago still being in place? You would notice it as a consumer and be like, "Why are you suggesting me something like this? Like, you guys are so much better at..." I would notice it right away and be like, "Man, you guys are normally so much better at suggesting something that I would actually wanna add on to this purchase, and [00:27:00] like you guys are just dropping the ball."

I would notice it straight away, and that's, that's something that, that system's not gonna last a long time for them.

Mikhail: Yeah. And it's, it's like it's also dependent on the third-party providers too. Like Amazon ver- relies on like the Google tracking cookie and all the other, like Facebook tracking cookies, and those change sometimes too, and you have to adapt to them. So you can't-- At that scale, almost can't be stagnant for even a month, let alone like a year. So m- they might not get new websites. I think there, there's a little bit of a difference here where like, uh, um, we're considering a new website like a complete rewrite, but Amazon doesn't get like a complete rewrite every two years.

Matt: No, certainly

Mikhail: it, it's, it's consistently updated every day adapt to whatever crap that they need to add into it because they're servicing the whole world pretty much, and everyone has different requirements, like every country, every state even.

Like in the s- in the States, Amazon's kind of a disaster because every state is completely [00:28:00] different in terms of shipping and like how taxes work and all that. Like it's really complicated, and I remember going there and it's like choosing state to state, you have completely different items available too.

So it, it, it's a very complex system that's constantly being updated, both from a technical perspective, like just to work, and, and from a marketing perspective to sell. Uh, there's not many competitors in that space, to be fair, so they're like, they're trying to compete with like the Walmarts of the world and the Best Buys and...

But like they're obviously, like they're, they're not competition to them at this point. so they're kind of the, the leader. But if we're talking like the, the competitor, like the lower-end competitors, I think Best Buy would be considered a, a lower-end competitor to Amazon. Uh, they have a huge job ahead of them.

Like the- marketing has to be super on point. And the, the other problem is that you could do whatever you want with the website, if your logistics are bad, if you're two days slower than Amazon, like someone will click on your link, looked at you're [00:29:00] two days slower, and gonna go to Amazon to order it for next day.

Matt: Yep

Mikhail: can have the best marketing in the world and you'd still lose 50% from, from, from just that perspective. So it's a very complicated in terms of like e-com at least, uh, from, from, in, i- near the top. With, with niches, it starts to get a little bit more like, okay, maybe there's gonna be a new website there every couple years just to kind of maintain the, the allure.

And a lot of people, like in, in niche products, they, they do like the, the more fancy websites and, you know, something that'll catch you, uh, maybe like that extra animation, especially on the marketing side of things. Um, it's a really weird world. Like ho- honestly, like the We're, we're in a weird spot right now with AI kind of doing a lot of grunt work for us. But one thing that's still happening is, like, websites still have to compete with each other for marketing. Now they have, like, SEO and GEO or whatever, uh, marketing that they have to compete [00:30:00] with, and that's a whole other thing. But for the most part, they're still trying to do-- They're trying to out, like, out-best each other, and the only way to do that, if you're actually trying to compete, if you're actually trying to make a, like a, get...

like, take a market segment, is to continually update and try new things and, like, have a whole engineering team for that specific purpose. It's crazy. Like, yeah, you're talking six-figure, seven-figure engineering teams just to keep a website alive sometimes just because you're competing in a competitive niche.

Matt: Well, especially like a small website, if it goes down for the weekend, most people don't really care.

Mikhail: yeah

Matt: SEO impacts alone, let alone the sales for some websites, like that's gonna be a totally huge thing. And, another thing too is that we're talking websites. We're not really talking web apps.

Obviously, some of these e-commerce websites are more web app than website, but, you know, in general, they're still kind of, they're kinda like bridging that gap. They're still sort of like we- like website adjacent. We're not even talking about when you go, go to, say, [00:31:00] the Google Photos marketing page, and then you click into Google Photos.

Like, we're not talking about the Google Photos stuff, 'cause that's a whole other world, where they're messing around with algorithms for searching. Uh, they're searching videos and searching images and sear- searching by date, and they're making... They're trying to sell photo books, so they're making collages, and they're making all these fancy images for you because they're trying to sell space and those photo books.

And so they're trying to be like, "Hey," like, "you should maybe try to buy one of these photo books. It'd be really nice around the holidays." And like, there's such a, you know, there's such a like back and forth where Google Photos is backing up your photos, but then there's all these other things that it does for you.

It d- it does do that catalog. It does do those, those, you know, my girlfriend always says the cute collages and stuff. It does do stuff like that. But it also, they also have a little angle there where at Christmas they always nudge me and be like, "Hey, $30 for a photo book of your best photos this year."

And it's like, well, how did it know, you know, first of all, you know, sure, it's the holiday season, easy enough, but how does it know what my, what my best photos are? So it has an algorithm in there [00:32:00] that's doing all that, and that's a whole other thing. I think, I think largely what we're kinda t- talking about, and, and we can kinda distill this down into two camps, is when you wanna replace a website, and Mike raised a good point, not necessarily the entire website.

When you're start... When you wanna replace even components of a website, when you start replacing things, whether it's the whole website or parts of it, you can distill that replacement need, I suppose, or want, into two camps, and that would be preference, which is more the want. "Hey, I want this to be more minimal because m- my competitors are becoming more minimal," for example.

And then the other camp would be technical necessity. "Hey, our credit card handler's gonna drop us. We have to change. Hey, our form handler's going out of business. We have to change our form handler. Let's maybe, you know, make some other updates at the same time. Hey, this whole website, this whole WordPress stack," which is a classic one for very, very old websites that haven't been maintained, "Hey, this, this really old WordPress stack is falling apart.

We need to replace this." Like, these, these themes don't even exist anymore. Like, how are we supposed to [00:33:00] maintain this, uh, you know, with any degree of good timing and, and good pricing? Especially for an agency trying to charge a small to medium business. Uh, even large businesses, like, they'll move so quickly that if you have any te- technical ricketiness, even if it's working perfect today, if you have any technical ricketiness and you're not agile, those big businesses won't really wanna work with you.

And even if you are working with technical ricketiness in the smaller businesses, anytime they make a change, you're like, "Oh, God," like I hope ... Like you're standing on stilts. It's like, "Oh, my God. I hope I don't fall over here. I hope this, this ... I hope this pushing this large image, that, uh, an image that's larger than I normally would, isn't gonna crash everything," right?

And you, and you don't want that. And so I think that that, that would be, like, a good sort of summarization of, of that, right? Where you have people that want to change due to their preference, and then you have the technical side of things where they, you need to make a change I think it would be, I think it'd be a good thing to touch on too, to talk about that sort of [00:34:00] like piecemeal or full replacement that you actually mentioned, Mike, 'cause that's actually kind of interesting as well, right?

Because y- especially in, in my space, we talk a lot about phasing projects out, where the person asks for 100 features and it's like, "Okay, hang on. Let's do five at a time. You know, we'll phase it out," whatever. But the same goes for future things as well. So let's say they're, they're-- I've shipped their website last year, they're happy with it, boom, there you go, and I'm gone for a year.

They, you know, they didn't want me to do any maintenance or anything, so I'm gone for a year. Telephone rings a year later, "Hey, I'm looking at doing this, this, this, this, this," and it usually becomes a big list of changes, right? Of things they wanna do again. And because they're a small to medium business, it's like, okay, hang on.

Let's do this in phases, or more specifically, let's do this in increments, an incremental replacement. Maybe what we'll do is we'll upgrade the blog post this month, and all the blog post templates will have a nicer font and better spacing. And then next month we'll do the forms, and then we'll do the landing, the landing page for that next, for your [00:35:00] next marketing campaign, which might be in the holiday season that's way down the road, like half a year away or something.

Then we'll, then we'll touch the landing pages. That way we sort of have three invoices. It's not something too crazy. You're not gonna... We're not gonna like overload everything. And then oftentimes you'll do one or two of these changes, and then the other one drops off. They don't actually need it or want it, uh, or the budget's not there.

And so that's fine. Like, you know, there it goes, right? Um- I think that like th- that like the incremental, incremental replacement is honestly probably the most common, with the exception of maybe marketing, marketing websites with no sort of app functionality, like no e-commerce or whatever. Like, landing pages for major websites, they totally change all the time.

It's like rip it out, make a new one, rip it out, make a new one. But those are almost like tires on a car where they're kind of like a consumable part. Whereas like, like Best Buy is not like, "Rip all our e-commerce stuff out. Okay, put it back in. Okay, rip it back out again. Okay, make me a new one." They're not, they're not doing that.

[00:36:00] And you actually see this in banks a lot, at least at, in Canada, where, like, we use, we use a major bank here, and the front page is, has changed a bunch over the years. And then the initial login page has changed a bunch, but not as much as that landing page. And then if you go in to buy, pay for a credit card, it's like you're, you're like using a telegraph machine.

Like you're going back to like when the bank first went online, and it's like 1917. Uh, and it, you, you could just tell, like they don't wanna mess with this 'cause this is like a crucial system that doesn't need all the flares and doesn't need the new marketing. And it is jarring though, where I like scroll up and I'm seeing the old nav bar from back when responsive design was first, first like brought into this, this bank's web app.

And it's like, oh, okay, I guess I'm using the, the o- the old nav bar. And then when I click the op- click one of the options in the old nav bar, it brings me to a page that is, has been redesigned. But we see that, right? Where they're incrementally, slowly upgrading [00:37:00] things that they deem, the, some things that they deem that matter.

Because when you're in a bank, you're, you know, you're paying your bills, you're checking if you've been paid, you're checking your interest rate, whatever. You're doing all that stuff, paying your credit cards. You're not there to be wowed by, "Oh my God, I just love the parallax of this, of this bank app."

Like no one, I've never heard anyone ever say that.

And they value stability over everything too.

Mikhail: That's what, yeah, stability and security, right? Like you gotta, you gotta be somewhat secure if you're a bank app, and you gotta be somewhat stable. The-- Having said that, our bank apps in Canada don't have anything past two-factor o-on text. Like we, we can't put a two-factor code into our bank apps for some reason.

I don't really know why. It's through text, uh, which is the least secure two-factor authentication. I never... Anyway, that's like a side rant. Uh, would love for them to update that. Uh, but yeah, no, it's, it's a weird, it's a weird spot when you have to make that decision, right? Like when you're, when you're the company [00:38:00] owner and you're like, "I haven't updated my website in like five years. I need these three things." And then you call your website guy, and you're like, "Well, I need these three things. Does it make sense?" Like a lot of times they will just be, like, like ask you flat out, like, "Maybe we just update the website 'cause my competitor has a new website, this guy has a new website. We're kinda looking... Like we're, we're falling behind." then it's on you as the website guy to be like, "Okay, let me look at it. Let me go into, you know, your competitors and make sure it makes sense." 'Cause if you're some random, like, you know, you sell rocks for, like you're, you're a gravel salesman, uh, yeah, your competitor's having a slightly better website than you might impact you.

But if you're one of three companies in the space and you're doing well, and you're, you know, you have, you have so many leads that you don't need any more leads, does it make sense to spend money there? Maybe not. Like maybe you need to spend money somewhere else that will make it so that you can take more people, like, you know, get another team of people with gravel, like go around selling gravel. I don't know. Like it, it's, [00:39:00] it's bad to just i- always advocate for being on top of like, you know, getting the new website done. I think as a, as a professional that you're trying to sell your professional brand to, you want to be as truthful as possible. Like I ta- I talk about this all the time to, like on the podcast, you're working with the person.

You're working with your client. You're not, you're working together. You're not working for them. if you sell that to them as like, "Hey, if I succeed, then you're gonna succeed. Like if I'm gonna make a website that's gonna be better for you, you're gonna get a much better, you know, re-response rate, and you're gonna get a much better throughput.

You're gonna get more sales." That's the sale that you have to do to them, and as long as you're on the same page there, then you can say stuff like, "Hey, it's not worth it for you to spend, you know, 10 grand month of my time on this website when we can just update those three things today, and at the end of the day, it's not gonna impact anything," Like you're gonna get, you know, your, your new footer with all the legal documents that you need. You're gonna get your contact [00:40:00] form updated and a map or something. Like maybe those are the three things that they need. It-- Yes, in the top space, that's not an option. competing for the top 1%, you can't do that.

You can't sit on your laurels. You can't be in, in, in a space where you, you just don't work on your website. In the medium to small business market, that's a very-- that is a decision that has to be made by you, by the professional web developer that we're talking to right now. You need to go in, do the research. You need to be the one that tells the client, "Hey, you need a new website because A, B, and C. Because your, your, your cl- your competitors are outranking you everywhere, and you're gonna lose. Like you're, you're doing okay now. You are going to lose clients next year if you don't upgrade." Right? That's the kind of language, that's the kind of mentality you need to have.

Or on the other side of it, like, "Hey, we built your website five years ago, but none of your competitors have updated. We can do a little bit of an update here. [00:41:00] It doesn't look like there's much, you know, room to grow really because you're already like capturing most of the market." That's on you. That's on the, that's on the developer.

That's on the agency that's working, that's working for that client. And need to be able to sit on that edge of, yes, you wanna make more money, you do not wanna take advantage of your client's, uh, ignorance to the s- to the pro-

Matt: But it, it's a good concern to have as well because, so we, we have had websites, like up and running up for people, and then they've gone to competitors, and we've had a few of those people that have gone to competitors. We've been open for a while. So we've had a few, few people that have gone to, gone to competitors that offer all of their websites, so it'll be another agency, and all of their websites are using some random CMS.

Sometimes it's considered enterprise, sometimes it's not, but it's like very kind of more niche and small, kind of like a CouchCMS in a way. Um, but all the websites look the same. Couch is a little more, you [00:42:00] kind of build the website and tape Couch onto it. These websites are very old school enterprise.

They're very corporate. It almost kind of look like an old forum without being a forum, and we've lost clients to people like that. And you might think, "Matt, like that's, that's absurd." But then I go and I look at their specific industry, and then I go and I look at their other competitors, and they're on the same similar systems.

And then that makes you think, okay, 'cause oftentimes the people we've lost were like when we were first getting started. We didn't really understand market research and things like that. And so it's like, okay, maybe the thing that we made was not a good fit and it wasn't helping them as much, and these other guys are working primarily on SEO stuff, and they know that if they're selling dump trucks or something, they know that the people who buy dump trucks are using terminals on the factory or the warehouse floor that are super freaking old.

Maybe they're on CRT monitors, bad internet, and they, these guys don't really even care about a picture of the truck. Like we [00:43:00] would-- In a marketing, modern marketing website, you'd have a picture of the truck and a, and a big gallery. Sometimes it's just like, here's a t- a, a 250-by-300 picture of the, the truck, and here's all the stats.

And all the person cares about in that industry is the, the weight, the, the weight capacity, the age of the engine, the amount of mileage on it, and then they wanna maybe go see it. Maybe there's like a book viewing button or something. It could be ugly, it could be whatever, but services that industry clearly 'cause they're all doing that.

They're all doing that. And you don't need the flashiness. You don't need that. And so- There, there's a reason why, like, there's agencies out there that don't join the conversations Mike and I are having. They're not in the zeitgeist. They don't care about AI. They don't do anything. They are maintaining, like, 500 websites, 300 websites, 100 websites, all on this random CMS that gets updated once a year, and they [00:44:00] just ship websites on that same CMS, they're masters of it, and that's it.

That's just what they do. Like, that is, that is their job. That's what they do, and it works for their specific niche. They reach out to the garden centers specifically, or specifically the dump truck selling companies or whatever. Because we... It, it's easy to lose yourself in the conversation of being a web developer and being in the zeitgeist and being all digital, whereas many industries use the digital side of things completely as a tool.

They don't, they're not there for the flashiness. They're not there for the designerness of, like, Nike or whatever. They're there to say, "Cool, how much topsoil did we sell this year by, by pound?" And if your website can't tell them that- You know, you're kinda, you're, what are you gonna do? And, and we've actually seen, it, it's interesting, we've actually seen websites, projects that we've made blow up, not because of us, but because [00:45:00] we'll get asked by somebody, "Hey, can you take over my website?

Can you make me a website?" It's like, okay. And we'll do all the market research, and we'll do, we'll look at like businesses at their scale, in their geographical area, things like that. Okay, you write down all the commonalities, you kinda do your, you know, you do your small business research. You figure it out.

You put it all together, and then you go to hand it to them, and they get wide-eyed on the call, on that Zoom call because they did not realize, "Oh, I thought this was just a landing page." No, no, no, you told me to be competitive. This is a full e-commerce platform with this and that and this and that. And we've had people pay us in full for the website, not even take the files, and then never contact us again.

And that sounds silly, but they realize immediately, "I don't ha- I don't know how to use a computer. I don't know how to do this." And power to them. Maybe they're really busy already. I can't e- like, like this guy's promising 40% more clients. We'd need a bigger warehouse to do that, and like I don't have $10 million to do that, [00:46:00] or I'm gonna retire in five years.

Like, I don't wanna do that. It's, like, there's niches upon niches upon, you know, unique situations, and we've abso- we've absolutely had websites that are, like, thousands of dollars. Person sees it, pays for it, never takes it, leaves. And that absolutely happens, and it's not, you know, it's not due to, like, w- we'll ask them, like, "What do you want?"

"Oh, I want a competitive website that's competitive in this space." Okay, and in the presentation, I will bring up slides or share my screen and show them, "Your competitor's doing this. We're doing this. Theirs loads at three seconds. Ours loads at two." You know, right, bang, bang, bang. Here we're doing this better.

Hey, we're doing this on par. Hey, they're doing this and we're not 'cause of this. Whole presentation, and they're just like, "Holy crap, I thought this was gonna be a 10-minute c- you know, click, click a Contact Us button, here's my address and here's my logo meeting." And they're completely flabbergasted. Like

Mikhail: Yeah, and, and a lot of times that happens even [00:47:00] after they've re- they, they knew that this was gonna be a big lift, because obviously during the initial calls we'll tell them what we're gonna be doing, and they agree to it. But, you know, a month goes by, two months goes by, they're in a completely different head space,

Matt: course

Mikhail: now they're, now they're being overloaded with, "Hey, you gotta write content, you gotta fix this, you gotta fix that."

Like, you gotta do stuff. And as soon as you tell them to do things, you're like, "Or, or you could pay us, and we'll, like, we'll, we'll do it for you." And then they're like, "Well, then I have to invest even more money into it anyway." Like, decisions get made on the, on the flip of a, on, on a, you know, flick of a switch without any external extra thought.

And then when they're actually faced with the reality of having to maintain a website or pay to have the mainta- uh, website maintained, they decide to go another route. And that's fine. Like, the, you know, like, it happens. You're right, Matt. Like, it, it's something that you just kinda live with, that thankfully it's only happened, you know, maybe a couple times to us.

Matt: Well, realistically we got paid. Um, not, not to sound like that, but it's like we, we did what we were paid for. They were... It's not like we chased them. They paid us and then they're just like, "I don't [00:48:00] know how to do that."

Mikhail: Yeah, it could have been worse. It could have been worse. uh, one thing I want to talk about before, um, before we end the podcast is, and especially specifically in this instance, um, security. So right now is a time when you can't really leave a website for any amount of time just on its own, and r- we're seeing an unprecedented amount of attacks.

So if your website is, like, more comp- like a React website or something like that, holy crap, you, you gotta mon- monitor your NPM modules. Like, they're constantly getting attacked. You have to make sure you're updated. If you have any vulnerabilities, you have to run Dependabot. Like, there's a bunch of things you need to do. There's some arguments to be made that that might be bad. Like, you know, running, running NPM right now in general might be bad because of the, because of the risk factor. But even if you're just doing a WordPress website or s- like, you know, WordPress does have a lot of, uh, dependencies, but even if you're doing, like, a static website on, like, an Apache or an Nginx server, there has been recent [00:49:00] Nginx CVE vulnerabilities, which means r- remote access.

Like, someone can through to your server from your Nginx, which is your, um, uh, y- your router essentially, like your... the, the, uh, the, the web server that, uh, provides, like, the access to the web. Someone could get access to your server through your Nginx if you don't patch it. So there's really no way, unless you're using a managed service that handles that for you, to be secure without keeping an eye on it at least. I really recommend anyone that has old websites up there, especially if they're attached to, like, personal servers or that contain any important information, update stuff. Look at it. Make sure your m- your provider has updated stuff. Make sure that you've updated stuff. Just keep an eye on it right now.

It's really difficult to keep a website running without any vulnerabilities today. That's the problem. maybe a few years ago when this wasn't [00:50:00] as pronounced and, like, there was definitely issues with your website. Like, we're just finding them now, right? Like, there was already issues, and there's, there might have been zero days that, you know, attackers already used. But they're not gonna use them on your website because they're not known. The problem is that now they're being, like, publicly disclosed everywhere, and that means that the attackers that are usually attacking your website, which most websites are under attack all the time. Like, I have multiple websites that are constantly being bombarded with requests, like, either trying to get to a, a file that they shouldn't have access to or just DDoSing for some reason.

Like, I don't even know why they're attacking these websites. They're, like, small little websites.

Matt: It's like bots, right? It's bots doing it

Mikhail: Yeah, exactly. But now they're, now they're armed with, like, real vulnerabilities that are constantly being found. So you're, you're at a disadvantage right from the get-go. If you're just gonna leave stuff open running, yeah, it's, it could bite you in the ass.

It could bite your client in the ass. It could, you know, there could be some serious ramifications, especially if there's an authentication system, especially if there's, you know, client data at [00:51:00] risk, especially if there's, like, money at, at stake. So, you know, keep an eye on it. Um, it's an important part that it could be, honestly, it could be a factor today to update or create a new website, in my opinion. Like, that's something that you could sell your client on and be like, "Hey, your website's really old. There's a lot of vulnerabilities that I might not be aware of. Let's update to the latest stuff, uh, because, to

Matt: Fair point

Mikhail: Yeah, like that, that could be a factor in updating today where, where it wouldn't have been maybe a couple years ago.

Matt: No, it, it, that's, that's a really good point actually, because, I mean, there are all those, uh, you know, there are all those attacks and like, like we'll... I'll install firewalls on websites that are just for marketing, and there won't even be any client data back there, and it'll all get like alert, alert, alert, alert.

I go look, and it's like someone's just like tried to log in 250 times with like the password admin and like admin, admin, and someone's tried to log in 700 times today from this and like all these IPs were banned today, and there were like 800 injection attacks and like, woo wee. And then now... And [00:52:00] that was like before, still to this day as well, and then now with all this, all these other security flaws that are being found, whether it's AI related or not, some are, some aren't, many are, uh, then like I think you're right.

Like, yeah, definitely try to keep, you know, try to keep your stuff up to date and, and, and, and that's gonna be a hard sell. It's gonna be a hard, literally a hard sell. Many people are gonna be like, "Ah, it's been fine all this time, like who cares?" It's also gonna be a hard sell to teams because if you are running a small agency, it's gonna be difficult to keep on top of all that, especially if a bunch of people now want a bunch of security.

You know, more business is great, but sometimes it's too much and so, so it's a, it's a tumultuous time in the security world, for sure. But I, uh, I think that's it. I think as a concluding statement, you know, how long will a website last really, really depends. I'd say that two-year, one-month mark is bang on for, for top marketing websites, but really take a look at what your client is doing, what their competitors are doing, what their niche is, who their clients are, [00:53:00] and really, really sort of take a look, uh, closely at their operation to see what it is that they're doing, what it is they're trying to accomplish with their website and, you know, whether things need to be more secure, less secure, updated more, visually changed, et cetera.

And then you can kind of give them a, a more accurate answer, I would say. But in terms of visuals, unless you're like super, super designer, anything faster than two years is, I think, overkill personally. Again, unless you're super, super designer and you rely on that. Uh, no one's gonna notice your website's been the same for two years,

Mikhail: Mm-hmm.

Matt: think, in most cases anyway.

But if you think I'm wrong, you know, please let us know in the comments. What do you recommend to your clients? If you're a freelancer or you run an agency or work for an agency, what do you guys recommend? What do you tell people, "Hey, we should change everything up. We should build new theme. We should do this, do that."?

Uh, what do you guys think? Let me know in the comments. You can comment on Spotify. You can comment [00:54:00] on Podbean. You can let us know on the socials as well. Uh, let us know what you think. And that's it. If you want to support episodes like this, remember that we are on Patreon and just... Wait, hang on, didn't say the link.

Got my order all messed up. We're on Patreon via patreon.com/htmlallthethings. Check out the tiers and give that a go. And many thanks to our $3 tier patrons, Tim from the Web Hacker on thewebhacker.com, Jason from Geek Life Radio via geekliferadio.com, Garrett Segall, Level Up Financial Planning via www.levelupfinancialplanning.com, Magnus from Yes Web via yesweb.se, Syntaxify from the HTML All the Things Discord server, and Stacy Mosteller from the website swoonworthydesigns.com.

And last but not least, I'd like to give a shout-out to Michael Larocca, a contributing author on htmlallthethings.com. Michael is the author of Self-Taught: The X Generation blog at selftaughttxg.com. And he actually just wrote an article, a companion article, uh, to Shant's episode that I did late [00:55:00] last year.

Just- he j- we just published that, uh, as of recording anyway, so it'll be d- you know, definitely live unless something's gone terribly awry. It'll be definitely live by the time you listen to this, so please go and check that out if you're interested. And that is it. Feel free to leave a comment or review on the platform that you are listening to this on, and we are signing off