Is your website still talking about the business you had three years ago while you’re out there running a completely different version today?
A few weeks ago, I hosted an event where I sat down with some business owners for website strategy sessions. The same problem showed up multiple times. Successful business owners with professional websites that were almost frozen in time.
Today, I want to share what I learned from those sessions and walk you through exactly how to look at your own website to see if you have this problem. More importantly, I’ll give you strategic ways to fix it without having to overhaul your entire site.
When Good Websites Get Stuck in the Past
Let me share two examples from the businesses I worked with.
The first was an action coach. When she first launched her business, coaching was her main thing. Naturally, she had a beautiful website created and her hero section was all about her coaching. The copy reflected how she would transform someone’s life through action coaching.
Then her business evolved. She’s such an enthusiastic mover and shaker, and she started creating groups to help people. She added events that she does every year where she has sponsors and gets an audience full of women to create connection. She built a community. Then she started doing retreats and travel experiences for women.
You can see that her business has started to grow and change. All of these new things she’s doing is actually a huge part of what she loves to do, and where she spends most of her time. The action coaching has fallen secondary to all these other initiatives.
But when you go to her website, it’s still talking about coaching like it was the only thing that she offered.
The second example is a business owner who’s a nutritionist. She initially focused on one on one nutrition coaching and sharing recipes. She had a blog on her website. She had it professionally done.
Over time, she discovered that she loved working with kids and started offering cooking classes for kids and tweens. Then she started expanding and having events, hosting birthday parties, and then retreats specifically for that age group. These programs became a significant part of her business.
But her website was still talking about the nutritional coaching like that was her only service.
You Did Nothing Wrong
Both of these business owners did nothing wrong. They built their websites that matched their business at the time it was built. That’s exactly what you’re supposed to do, and that’s fantastic. Everything is aligned.
But then life happens. You discover what you really love to do. Maybe you’re adding new services, maybe you’re niching down, finding a specific ideal client that you like to work with. Maybe a client asks you to do something for them and it’s something new and you realize you’re really good at it and you love it, so you add it to your offer suite.
You expand. You pivot. You add things. This is normal. This is a healthy growing business.
But when your website is sitting there talking about version 1.0 of your business while you’re now running 3.0, there’s a disconnect.
Why This Happens (And Why It Matters)
This happens because you are busy. You’re busy running your business, you’re serving clients, you’re developing new programs. Updating your website sometimes feels like a big, overwhelming project that you’ll get to eventually.
Or you might think, well, the information is on there somewhere. If people click around enough, they’ll find it. Or you create some landing pages for each of the specific events that you have and you know how to send people to that specific landing page, but it’s not truly integrated into your entire website.
There’s a mismatch, and there’s a cost to this mismatch.
When someone lands on your homepage and the hero section is talking about coaching but coaching isn’t your main focus anymore, you’ve created confusion. The person is wondering if they’re in the right place. They came to your website to figure out if you can help them, and within three seconds or less, they need to understand what you do.
If your hero section doesn’t reflect your current business, you may have lost that opportunity.
What’s worse is that if someone is interested in these retreats but your navigation up at the top doesn’t make that easy to find, they’re not gonna hunt around for it. They’re gonna leave and find someone else whose website clearly communicates what they offer.
Is Your Website Stuck in the Past?
Look at your hero section. Does it describe what you do now? Not what you did, but what you do now?
Is your navigation making it easy for people to find what they’re actually looking for?
If you’re recognizing yourself in these stories, I want to share what actually needs to change. I’ll prioritize these for you because I know you’re not gonna overhaul your entire website this week.
The Three Strategic Updates That Make the Biggest Impact
Update 1. Your Hero Section
The most important update you can make is that hero section. The section that people see first when they land needs to have clear words and images in three seconds or less so they know if they’re in the right place.
For the action coach example, her hero was talking about her action coaching. However, she has multiple ways that she works with people now. Coaching, community, retreats, and events.
Instead of something like “Transform your life through action coaching,” we need something more like “Join a community of women who are ready to take action through meaningful events, genuine connection, and travel experiences that put you first.”
This shares the different ways that she works with women. It’s not just the action coaching.
When you think about your hero section, it needs to answer these questions. Who do you help? What do you help them with? And how can they work with you?
If your business has evolved to include multiple offerings, your hero needs to acknowledge this without overwhelming people. Make sure they’re in the right place when they land on that hero. It needs to be clear what you are offering.
Update 2. Your Navigation
Your navigation is the main way people explore and journey through your website. If your new offerings aren’t clearly represented in your navigation, people won’t find them.
For both clients that I shared about, we talked about restructuring their navigation to reflect their current business model, not their original one.
For the action coach, she actually had “Work with Me” as a dropdown that included a few different ways like her community, her coaching, and her retreats. However, a better idea would be to include Coaching, Community, Retreats, and Events as their own items in the upper navigation.
These are the three different silos. When someone comes to the website, they can self identify what silo they want to go in. This immediately tells visitors that she offers these options.
For the nutritionist, instead of just “Nutrition Coaching” and “Kids Program,” she needed to add an Events option in her navigation to help people self identify and learn about the events she had coming up.
Your navigation does need to be simple, though. Keep it to five items or less in that main menu, but those items need to reflect what you’re actually focused on right now.
If you’re looking for help restructuring your website navigation and overall strategy, I’d love to help with a website audit where we can look at your current site together and create a clear plan.
Update 3. Internal Linking Strategy
Even if you have all the right pages, if they’re not connected to each other, people won’t flow through your site naturally.
In the example of the action coach, she has an event called Better Together. When you get to that page, it’s important to weave ways to get to her different offerings from there. If someone is unable to attend her event, perhaps they want to join the community. Link to the community page.
And if there is a community and she’s having some travel options, perhaps link to the travel from the community so that the community can find out other ways to connect with other women.
Create pathways between your offerings so people understand how everything connects.
Your Action Plan for This Week
If you feel like your website is stuck in the past, focus on those three areas.
First, look at your hero section. Try rewriting it, making sure that it reflects your current business. This has the highest impact you can make. If you do one thing, change that hero section.
Then look at that navigation and make sure your main menu reflects your current offerings.
Finally, as you have these different offerings, consider adding some internal links to each other. Make it easy for someone interested in one thing to discover another.
Your business is supposed to grow and evolve. Mine is always doing that. That’s how we succeed. But you need to make sure that your website evolves with it.
If your hero section is talking about the 2022 you but you’re out there being the almost 2026 you, you’re confusing potential clients and missing opportunities every single day.
Next Steps
Take an hour this week and do the audit that I just shared with you. Just knowing where this disconnect is will help you prioritize what to fix first.
If you aren’t sure, if you feel that your business has changed but you aren’t sure how to integrate it all together, I would love to help. We can book a website coaching call together and take a look at what you have going on in your business, then apply it to your website, making sure that everything runs cohesively, hand in hand, making your website a client generation machine.
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