As a website designer, WordPress Rehab is one of my favorite things to do for clients. Often people come to me wondering how to improve their online presence without completely starting over. They may have a website that works fine, but lacks appeal. It may not have been updated or improved for years. Visitors may not be inspired to revisit after one brief landing - so they're losing potential clients and customers. Or, once on the website, visitors don't seem inclined to poke around because information about services and products isn't clear, is missing or is not easily accessible.

Low-cost Website Revitalization

A new website can take hours to build and can be a daunting expense for small businesses. Website rehab can be a better solution, and it will cost much less to accomplish than a full blown new out-of-the-box website. Revitalizing an existing website without changing the basic structure (theme) is entirely possible in many situations, providing the theme isn't too outdated. Most sites can be improved by simply updating the elements, adding new photos, changing page formats, adding color to an otherwise bland palette, and installing new plugins. Uninstalling old plugins and outdated software can also increase site performance - and most people just don't know where to begin with that. I have worked with older website rehabs where the customer simply needed to purchase a new theme license in order to make the theme more functional. This option may work well for some business - and in situations where the theme upgrade (this is situation dependent) doesn't require additional build-time, expenses remail fairly low.

The expense of a simple low-cost website revitalization can be as low as $500-$700.

Outdated Theme

With older websites it may be necessary to change the theme altogether - this can also be an important step to take if you want to take advantage of the current apps and theme options that are available. It's also a good idea if you're interested in keeping your website secure, and accessible to visitors. If you have an existing website that's running on an old theme that the developers have abandoned (upgrades are not available) then a new theme may be necessary. In many cases existing content will load easily into the new theme - but there are varying levels of difficulty to this process depending on factors such as: whether you are upgrading to the same theme, just a newer version (the easiest option), if you are changing themes completely (a little more complicated). Sometimes the content is not capable of flowing into a new theme and will need to be copied (and possibly edited) onto new pages. All of these variables may require more time and expertise to accomplish.

Installing a new theme using existing content can range between $700-$1,200 - depending on the complexity.

Additional considerations - the importance of updating a website

Also - many older sites are not up to date with search engine optimization; lacking keywords and phrases - or keywords and phrases are not currently accessible to search bots. Or they may not be getting search engine crawls because someone abused the keywords with bloat in an earlier effort. Photos may lack word content and are therefore invisible to search bots, presenting a problem for crawlers. Forms may not be functional due to outdated software. All of these things can easily be improved to enhance a website's performance as part of a rehab project.