How often should you update your website?

There’s a mindset that goes: build the website, launch the website, move on. Job done. And for the first few months, that feels right — the site’s live, it looks good, the enquiries come in. Then, slowly, you stop looking at it. A year passes. Two. And one day you realise the prices are out of date, the photos are from before the refurb, and the copyright still says 2023.

A website isn’t a brochure you print once. It’s a living thing, and like anything living, it either gets cared for or it declines. Here’s an honest look at what “updating” actually means — and how often each bit needs doing.

The stuff that needs doing constantly (but isn’t hard)

These are the bits that go stale fastest, and the bits that actually cost you customers when they do:

• Your prices and your services. The moment these are out of date, you’re either losing enquiries (from people who think you’ve gone up) or losing money (from people booking at old prices).
• Your opening hours. If your hours change and the website still says the old ones, you’re turning away customers who assume you’re closed.
• Your contact details. Phone number, email, address — one stale detail and a customer can’t reach you.
• Staff, reviews, recent work. Anything that signals “this business is alive and busy” rather than “this site was last touched in 2022”.

These don’t take long, but they need someone actually doing them. The moment nobody’s responsible, they drift.

The stuff that needs doing regularly (and you can’t see)

This is the maintenance that’s invisible but critical:

• Software updates. If your site runs on a platform like WordPress, the core, the theme and the plugins all need updating regularly. Skip it and you’re open to security holes, broken features, and eventually a site that stops working.
• Backups. If something breaks — a bad update, a hack, an accidental delete — a recent backup is the difference between a five-minute fix and starting from scratch.
• Security monitoring. Small business sites get probed by bots constantly. Someone needs to be watching for trouble.
• Performance checks. Making sure the site’s still fast, still working on new phones and browsers, still loading properly.

The stuff that needs doing occasionally

Every year or so, take a proper step back. Does the design still look current? Is the copy still accurate to who you are now? Are there new services to add, old ones to retire? A refresh every so often keeps the site earning its keep rather than slowly becoming a liability.

What happens when none of it gets done

Sites don’t break all at once. They degrade. A plugin update gets skipped. Then another. A security hole opens. A page stops working on new phones. The content drifts out of date. Google notices the neglect and ranks you a little lower. One day you go to update something and realise the whole thing’s become fragile and stale — and the cost of fixing it is now several times the cost of maintaining it would have been.

The honest takeaway

“How often should I update my website?” The honest answer is: small bits constantly, the technical bits regularly, the whole thing reviewed every year or two. The businesses whose websites actually work for them aren’t the ones who built once and forgot — they’re the ones who treat the site like the active, working part of their business it is.

The good news: you don’t have to do any of it yourself. A proper care plan — updates, backups, monitoring, and someone keeping the content current — means your website keeps working for you long after launch day. The question isn’t really how often you should update. It’s whether anyone’s actually doing it.