When the business has moved on

Is your website still telling the old story?

You know the moment. Someone asks for the website and you send the link with a paragraph attached: ignore the services page, the recent work isn’t up there yet, we don’t really do that any more. The business has changed. The pages still describe the one you used to run. This page is about measuring that gap properly, then deciding how much of the site has to change to close it. Sometimes it’s a few pages. Sometimes it isn’t.

What does the website leave people believing?

Read your site the way a stranger does: in order, quickly, and without you there to explain it. They draw five conclusions on the way through, and each one comes from a particular place.

What you do.

Decided on the homepage, from the first screen.

What you do most.

Decided from which services get the prominence, and where the site sends people next.

What size of work you take on.

Decided from the examples, the scale of the projects shown and the way clients are described.

Who they’d be dealing with.

Decided from the people, the specific explanations and any qualifications that matter in your field.

Whether you’re worth calling.

Decided from how you’re different, and whether that rests on facts or on claims anyone could make.

Now put the truth beside each one. The work you want most. The customers you’re equipped to serve. The expertise behind delivery. The reasons to choose you. What you deliver today. Wherever the stranger’s conclusion and the truth don’t match, that’s the gap. Be strict about the last one. The website should show what the business already does, and keep it separate from what it intends to do next.

Is the gap in the message, the evidence or the experience?

Three kinds of mismatch, and they overlap.

Message.

What the site says about the offer, the audience or the reasons to choose you is unclear or out of date.

The stranger draws the wrong conclusion because that’s what the words say.

Evidence.

The claims are accurate, but the work, the people and the detail that would back them aren’t there.

The stranger has no reason to believe you.

Experience.

The right information exists, but it’s buried, hard to interpret or presented so inconsistently that the impression doesn’t hold together.

The stranger gives up before they find it.

Working out which you have decides what changes. A new layout fixes an experience gap. It does nothing for a message gap, and it can make an evidence gap more obvious.

A different business needs a different story.

A training provider spent ten years running public one-day courses. In the last three it has started designing programs across whole organisations: tailored content, several cohorts, measurement afterwards. That’s the work it wants now. Its website still leads with a course calendar, prices and a “book now” button.

The new buyer is a learning manager, and she has different questions.

Can you tailor this to us?

Who designs it, and who delivers it?

Have you done this at our scale?

How will we know it worked?

The site answers none of them. It answers “when’s the next course” and “how much”, which were the old buyer’s questions.

What to investigate

Which service leads. Whether the course calendar still belongs on the front page or moves behind it. What evidence of organisational programs exists and can be shown. Whether the people who design the programs appear anywhere.

Design comes into it. It isn’t the first decision.

Change what needs changing.

How much has to change depends on what the reading found.

If the direction is clear but the key pages are stale, update the content and the proof. Nothing else needs touching.

If the audience or the offer is still unresolved, settle the positioning before rewriting or redesigning anything. Otherwise you rebuild the wrong story, beautifully.

If the story is accurate but the structure hides it, the work is information structure and experience: what leads, what sits with what, where the proof goes.

If the existing site can’t hold the content or the functions the business now needs, that’s scoped development, or a broader rebuild where it’s justified.

A refresh isn’t always enough. A rebuild isn’t the natural end of every mismatch either. Whatever the scale, keep the content that’s still right, the brand assets people recognise and the parts that work.

Start with the business the website needs to represent.

The communication requirement comes from five sources:

What you offer now

Who it’s for

The work you’ve actually done

The questions your sales conversations keep answering

Where the business is heading

Depending on scope, we gather that by talking to the right people and reviewing what already exists.

You contribute the knowledge and approve every factual claim. We clarify it and express it, through whichever of positioning, content and experience work the gap calls for. Where the broader direction is the open question, a Clarity Audit is an option. For a known content gap, it isn’t a prerequisite. If the gap turns out to need positioning, content and a rebuild together, a Growth Partnership can carry that as one program.

What do you find yourself explaining?

Share the website, and the paragraph you attach when you send it. That’s the gap in your own words, and it’s the best possible starting point for a conversation. The first one is free.