The short version
- The trigger is a sentence that is no longer true. A page describing a buyer you stopped selling to earns a rewrite. Taste does not.
- If the page is hard to write, the unfinished decision sits behind it. One account replaced per-deal pricing with flat tiers because prospects spent the call working out what they would owe.
- Check that anyone is reading it first. On one account organic click-through averaged 0.11% for a month while positions held steady.
- A homepage rewrite becomes a site rebuild quickly. One migration ran to 42 routes, 387 content entries and 545 assets, with roughly one record in six carrying something irregular.
Rewrite the homepage when a sentence on it has stopped being true, which happens when the buyer changes or when the price does. Leave it when the complaint is that it looks dated. On the accounts we audit the page is rarely the constraint, and whatever is costs less to fix.
When is a rewrite the right call?
When something on the page has stopped being true. A different buyer signs the contract now, or the price is no longer the price. A stranger notices, and the people who notice were the visitors you had already qualified.
The second trigger is a decision made elsewhere that the page contradicts. Positioning gets agreed in a meeting, the homepage keeps the old frame, and every asset built afterwards inherits the old frame too, because the homepage is what everybody copies from.
What the complaint usually is, and where the fix actually sits:
| The complaint | What it usually means | Where the fix sits |
|---|---|---|
| It looks dated | Nothing measured has changed | Design, behind the work with numbers on it |
| Nobody understands what we do | Positioning is unresolved | The positioning, then the page |
| Prospects ask what it costs on the call | The pricing model needs explaining | The pricing model |
| We rank and nobody clicks | Titles and descriptions | The search result, not the page |
| Traffic arrives and nothing progresses | One lifecycle stage, no nurture | The CRM |
| We shipped and nobody came | No arrival mechanism was built | Distribution |
When is the homepage not the problem?
When nobody is reading it. On one account positions looked healthy while the average organic click-through rate ran at 0.11% across a month, which means the pages were shown in search and skipped. The titles and descriptions were the problem, and a homepage rewrite touches neither.
When the page works and the stage after it does not. A CRM audit on another engagement found roughly 98% of contacts sitting in the first lifecycle stage with no nurture behind it, so a better homepage would have produced a longer list.
What does it mean when the page is hard to write?
A decision upstream is unfinished. On one account the pricing had been structured per deal, and prospects spent the sales call working out what they would owe rather than whether they wanted the product. It was replaced with flat tiers. No amount of homepage copy fixes a model that needs explaining before the product does.
The same goes for the buyer. A page that hedges between two audiences is usually a company that has not chosen between them, and the writing takes the blame.
What does a rewrite actually cost?
More than the page, because it rarely stops at the page. One enterprise rebuild we ran covered 42 routes, 387 content entries and 545 assets out of a hosted CMS. Roughly one record in six carried something irregular: a legacy field, or a reference with no destination in the new model.
Old pages went behind a staging path with their forms deliberately stubbed, because a live-looking form that goes nowhere is worse than a missing one. Design was the cheap half of that project; the time went into the records underneath it.
Forty-two routes on the surface, 387 content entries and 545 assets underneath. The records are the project.
How do you decide before you commit the quarter?
Write down what would have to be true for the rewrite to have worked, and where you would read it. If the honest answer is that the page would look better, that is a taste project, and it waits behind the work with numbers attached to it.
Then find out what is actually live. On that same project the staging URL everybody quoted had been correct a year earlier and served a different application by the time we arrived, while production ran a different framework from the repository we had been handed.
Two things worth reading first: what the migration underneath it costs and what an unexplainable price does to the page.
Frequently asked questions
When should you rewrite your homepage?
When something on it has stopped being true, which usually means the buyer changed or the price changed. A page that only feels dated is a design question, and it belongs behind the fixes with numbers attached to them.
How often should a homepage be rewritten?
On a trigger rather than a schedule. Companies that rewrite annually because a year has passed tend to change the words and leave the positioning where it was.
Why is my homepage not converting?
Check whether anyone is reading it. On one account positions looked healthy while organic click-through averaged 0.11% for a month, so the pages were shown in search and skipped. Then check the stage after the form.
How much does a homepage rewrite cost?
The page is the small part. One enterprise rebuild we ran covered 42 routes, 387 content entries and 545 assets out of a hosted CMS, with roughly one record in six carrying something irregular.
Should you fix positioning or the homepage first?
Positioning. A homepage renders a decision, and rewriting the rendering while the decision is open produces a page that hedges between two audiences. A page that is hard to write is the signal.
What should you check before starting a website rewrite?
What is actually live and how it publishes. On one engagement the staging URL in the project document had been correct a year earlier and served a different application by the time we arrived, and production ran a different framework from the repository we were handed.
Sources
- Chua Network delivery data across 8 client accounts (internal fact bank)
- Chua Network engagement records, anonymized (internal experience bank)
