Your website one year on: what to review, and what to tell the MD

The new website has been live for a year. Your MD asks a simple question: how’s it doing?

You’ve got numbers. Visits are up, bounce rate is down, people are spending longer on the pages. But you know what they actually want to hear, and it’s the one thing you can’t say for sure: what has it brought in?

A proper website review after launch answers that question. Most year-one reviews don’t, because they’re built from the numbers that happen to be easy to pull.

Why it happens

Most websites are treated as a project with an end date.

The biggest myth in our industry is that once a site goes live, the enquiries roll in. They don’t. Launch is when the real test starts, but by then the agency has moved on, the budget is spent and your team is back on business as usual.

Nobody set a baseline before launch, so there’s nothing to compare against. Nobody watches what people actually do on the key pages, so nobody knows where they leave.

And quietly, the site starts drifting. A page added here, a new service there, until it’s on its way back to the mess you replaced.

Meanwhile the world around it has moved. Google and AI tools now answer a lot of your buyers’ questions before they click, so the people who still arrive matter more than they did a year ago. A review that only counts visits misses that completely.

What it’s costing you

A year without checking is a year of guessing.

• You can’t answer the MD. Traffic and time on site aren’t an answer to “what did we get for the money?”
• Fixes are guesses. Without evidence, the changes are small and safe, and they don’t move anything.
• The site drifts. Every bolted-on page makes it harder to find things, and the clarity you paid for wears away.
• Visitors leave without telling you why. Analytics shows where they go, not what stopped them getting in touch.
• The next redesign comes early. Because nobody kept this one working, you end up paying to start again.

What doesn’t fix it

The usual year-one review is a traffic report. It answers the wrong question.

“It’s new, so it’s fine.” New and working aren’t the same thing. A year is long enough for problems to be costing you.

“Traffic’s up, so it’s working.” More visits that don’t turn into enquiries is a cost, not a result.

“The analytics will tell us.” They’ll tell you what happened. They won’t tell you why, or what to fix first.

“We’ll redesign in a few years.” Most sites don’t need rebuilding. They need a handful of things fixed, now.

What fixes it

Get evidence of what’s actually wrong, fix what’s costing you most first, and set up reporting so next year’s answer is easy.

A UX audit is the simplest way to get the evidence. It’s a fixed-price review of the site, with a clear list of what’s stopping people getting in touch and what to fix first, written so you can hand it to anyone to action. Three levels, from £550 + VAT.

If you want the fixes made and proved, our 12-week conversion programme works on the site you already have. It’s measured from week one, changes go live as we go, and you get proof of what moved at the end. No rebuild, no migration risk. It’s quoted per programme.

And so you’re never stuck for an answer again, connected data and reporting joins the website to your CRM, so you can see the enquiries and revenue it brings in, not just the visits.

What to review. Before you write anything for the MD, look at four things:

• What it has brought in. Enquiries, and what they turned into, not just visits.
• Where people drop out. The key pages where visitors arrive, look around and leave.
• What’s been added since launch. Every new page and menu item, and whether it earns its place.
• What still describes you. Services, people and proof that have changed in a year but not on the site.

What to tell the MD. Keep the report to three things they can act on:

• What it brought in. Enquiries and what they turned into, compared with before launch.
• What’s in the way. The top three things stopping more people getting in touch.
• What fixing them is worth. And what it would cost to fix them, so the next decision is easy.

• Evidence, not another opinion. Something to put in front of the MD that settles what needs doing.
• The costly problems get fixed first. In priority order, not in order of who complained loudest.
• You can show what it brings in. Enquiries and revenue, not just traffic.
• The site keeps getting better. Instead of slowly drifting back to where it started.

Keep reading

• How do I show ROI on a new website?
• Small changes, big results: how continuous optimisation works
• Stop moving the goalposts: agree what marketing success means