What is the average website lifespan? (Plus 5 ways to extend it).

It’s surprising how quickly a new website starts to look outdated. Website technology evolves at an astounding speed. And — as soon as one competitor offers something new — user expectations start to shift.

Keeping your site relevant is a challenge. But it makes a huge difference to your business. An up-to-date site provides users with relevant information. It meets their expectations in terms of features and functionality. It also helps you to achieve these business and website goals:

• More organic traffic
• A better brand image
• A better user experience
• Improved conversion rates

In this post, we take a look at the average website lifespan. We also look at five things you can do — when designing, developing and running a website — to make a website last longer.

What is the average website lifespan?

Research shows that the average website lifespan is just two years and seven months.

There’s variation from industry to industry and company to company. Some websites last longer. Some don’t even last two years.

Across the board, the longest you can expect a website to successfully support business goals is around five years. At this point, you need to invest in a website redesign.

Read more: 10 signs it’s time to redesign your website

5 ways to make a website last longer

A website is a significant business investment. So you want to ensure that it lasts as long as possible.

Some factors are out of your control. For example, you can’t influence your competitors and whether they decide to get a new, shiny website. And while you can hazard an educated guess, you can’t predict with 100% accuracy how your industry is going to change over the coming years.

But there are a couple of things you and your web design and development agency can do to improve the longevity of your site.

To make a website last longer:

• Follow web design and development best practices
• Opt for minimalist design
• Design for the future
• Ensure your site is easy to update
• Commit to regular site maintenance

1. Follow web design and development best practices

First up, it’s important to start with a great website. That means following web design and development best practices in relation to all the following.

Responsiveness.

Your website should be responsive, adapting to all browsers and devices. That way, if a tech company releases a new device, your website still displays perfectly.

User experience.

Your website should provide a cutting-edge user experience (UX). Using your site should be easy and enjoyable. Your website should also align with the UX website visitors are getting elsewhere.

Accessibility.

Accessibility has (rightly) become a web design priority in recent years. So ensure any new site meets the latest web accessibility guidelines.

Optimise for performance.

Optimise for performance. Your new site should work perfectly. It needs to be fast, with pages loading in seconds. It should be optimised for SEO. And it needs to provide top-notch web security.

By following these best practices, you start with the best and most up-to-date website possible. This helps to improve your website lifespan.

2. Opt for minimalist design

Website trends move at light speed. So websites that follow the latest design trends are likely to go out of fashion quickly.

Minimalist web design is as close to timeless as we get in the web design world. It uses white space, clean lines and a carefully curated website colour scheme to create a beautiful, user-friendly site.

Because minimalist websites are simple — and because they focus on functionality and clarity — they maintain their appeal even as website trends evolve.

A minimalist approach to design also reduces back-end bulk, which can lead to slow site loading speeds and poor SEO performance. Streamlined code makes the site easier to maintain and update, too.

Of course, minimalist doesn’t have to mean characterless. The best minimalist websites align with your company branding. They use your brand’s colours, typography and imagery to create a stronger connection with website users.

3. Design for the future

When designing a new website, it’s best to think long term. To make a website last longer, it should meet your needs now — and adapt well to your evolving business, too.

To future-proof your web design, web designers and developers shouldn’t rush into building your new site. They need to start with a comprehensive plan.

At Radical, we spend a lot of time at the start of a project finding out about you and your business. We learn about your customers, competitors, business goals and branding requirements.

We also ask our clients to imagine where they’ll be in five years. If, for example, you already have plans to expand your product offering or change your content strategy, we can build a website that adapts more easily to these future developments.

By designing for the future, it’s easier to make changes to your site — keeping it relevant to your business and its goals — without having to undergo a full website redesign.

4. Ensure the site is easy for you to update

Whether you plan to make site updates yourself — or get a tech team to do it for you — your site should be easy to update.

That means having a content management system (CMS) that’s straightforward and simple to use. Via your website’s CMS, you can then:

• Add new site content and update old content (this is good for SEO)
• Add new images and videos to replace old, outdated ones
• Ensure all information about your business, products and/or services is up-to-date
• Refine and streamline website navigation by getting rid of the links that people click on least

These smaller updates are a great way to keep your website meeting user expectations and achieving business objectives.

5. Commit to site maintenance

Another way to make a website last longer is with regular maintenance. An expert tech team can complete a range of technical updates, including:

• Updating your website with the latest security software, so you have the best possible defence against hacking attempts. This helps to keep your website and customer data safe.
• Optimising the performance of your website, fine-tuning to ensure fast loading speeds and usability, even as you add new site content.
• Ensuring that your site continues to follow best practices by updating your site in line with any new accessibility guidelines or browser developments.
• Expanding functionality and giving users the web experience they’re looking for, by safely updating and adding plugins.

Regular website maintenance helps you keep up with the competition. With a little and often approach, you make the necessary changes to your website month by month.

This means you may be able to delay a full redesign, making your site last way beyond the average website lifespan.

In summary

There are various things you can do to prolong the life of your business website.

Use expert designers and developers, who’ll plan carefully, design for the future and follow best practices. Regularly review and update site content. And get your tech team to make technical updates.

These actions will help your site to rank well in search engine result pages (SERPs) and meet user expectations.

But remember that even the most carefully planned and beautifully crafted website only tends to last for five years at most. It’s likely that — by the five-year mark — your business goals, the competitive landscape and website technology will have changed considerably.

So, at this point, it’s probably time to consider a redesign. This will bring your website bang up-to-date, with your latest branding and the latest functionality.

Unsure whether your site needs a redesign? Get in touch with the friendly Radical team for our honest, straight-talking advice.