When you buy a business you inherit its website, and nobody values it during the sale. This one was holding the new owner back and she could not see why.
What they were after
A salon that had recently changed hands. The new owner had the location, the staff and the customers, and a website built by the previous owner that came with the keys. It was live, it had the right name on it, and on paper there was nothing to fix.
What she actually had was a site that had been assembled rather than built. It worked in the sense that it loaded. It did not work in the sense that someone searching for a salon in her area would find it, and the people who did find it were not learning much once they arrived.
What we did
- Rebuilt it rather than patched it. Once the structure of a site is the problem, editing pages inside it is money spent on a foundation you have already decided against.
- Rebuilt it around the new owner’s business. A site inherited in a sale describes the business the previous owner ran. Some of that had already stopped being true.
- Took local search seriously. Pages built around what people nearby actually type, and the listings and profiles that decide whether a local business appears at all.
- Moved it onto hosting we run. So updates, backups and the next change are ours to deal with rather than hers.
What changed
Visibility in local search improved and online visits went up, which for a business whose customers are all within a short drive is the only measure that matters. Search is where a new customer decides between her salon and the next one.
The transferable part
An inherited website is the least examined asset in a small business sale. Stock gets counted, the lease gets read, the books get reviewed — and the site transfers on the assumption that a working site is a working site.
It is usually worth an hour of someone’s attention in the first month of ownership, because the cost of leaving it alone is invisible. It does not break. It just quietly fails to bring anyone in, and there is nothing on any statement that says so.
Talk to us about a site you inherited
If you bought a business and the website came with it, we will tell you honestly whether it is worth keeping. Sometimes it is. Get in touch.