Your Site Isn’t Broken. That’s the Problem.
The websites hardest to replace are the ones that still (mostly) work
If your organization’s site were actually broken — returning errors, failing logins, locking out half your users — the decision to rebuild would be easy. Leadership would approve the budget, and the work would start right away.
Not every problem calls for a rebuild. Many are just the result of neglected maintenance. The updates aren’t exciting, but a well-maintained site on a solid platform will serve your organization for years.
If your site’s core architecture still fits what you need it to do — you can publish content, manage users, integrate the tools you rely on, and meet your accessibility baseline — then patching and ongoing maintenance is probably the right track.
Maintenance also makes sense when the problems are specific: a module that needs updating, a content type that needs restructuring, a design component that’s aging out. These are solvable issues that don’t require tearing down the foundation.
The bigger question is whether the problems stay specific, or start pointing at the foundation of the site itself.
If you’re realizing you need to act, your first instinct might be to call a vendor or issue an RFP for a redesign.
Before you do, start with some internal work. The organizations with the best rebuilds do two things before they talk to a vendor.
1. Talk about what you need (and write it down)
Deciding what you need in a rebuild and deciding who should build it are different decisions, made at different times with different information. Organizations that try to answer both at once are setting themselves up to fail.
Figure out what you need internally first. Hold the meetings, talk to your stakeholders, do a little research. You’ll still want help before any final decisions — but the vendor conversations go a lot further when you arrive with clarity about the problems you need to solve, rather than asking an agency to define them for you.
2. Decide who owns the project (internally)
A rebuild of a large website can take anywhere from six months to over a year. A project that long, with that many moving pieces and people, needs a project lead — someone with the authority to make decisions, gather input across departments, and keep things moving when other priorities compete.
The lead doesn’t need to be technical. But they do need to be empowered, and they need to be named before the engagement starts, not after it’s already in motion.
Try our free CMS assessment.
That uncertainty is normal, and it’s worth resolving before you start a vendor conversation or an internal budget process.
The assessment takes less than five minutes, and surfaces the patterns above in the context of your specific site.
When done, you'll have a clearer read on whether you’re in maintenance territory or approaching the line where rebuilding becomes the more practical path.
Dan Moriarty is the co-founder, CEO and chief strategist with Electric Citizen.
