How up to date are Vancouver and Victoria business websites?
A website that hasn't changed in a year tells visitors something, even if the business is thriving. Old hours, last year's menu, a team page with people who've moved on: small things that make customers wonder whether the information is still right.
We wanted to know how common that is, so we looked at local business websites in Vancouver and Victoria, British Columbia.
The short version
- 13% of the WordPress business sites we looked at hadn't been updated in more than a year, and 8% in more than two years. The oldest hadn't changed in over nine years.
- Professional services were the least up to date: 17% of dentist, lawyer and accountant sites had gone more than a year without a change, compared with 12% of restaurants.
- About 30% of the local business websites we reached run on WordPress.
- 60% of WordPress sites are built with a page builder plugin such as Elementor, Divi or WPBakery, which adds another layer of software to keep updated.
- Of the sites that show their WordPress version, 26% were still on a version older than 7.0.
What we looked at
In a recent survey of websites in Vancouver and Victoria, we looked at a mix of professional services and other local business websites. For each WordPress site, we found the most recent date any page or post had been changed.
How long since the last update
- 13%: no changes in over a year
- 8%: no changes in over two years
Vancouver and Victoria looked much the same: 14% of Vancouver's WordPress sites and 12% of Victoria's had gone more than a year without an update.
Most sites are updated fairly often, which makes sense for restaurants that post menus and specials. But the long tail is real, and a site that goes quiet tends to stay quiet.
By type of business
Share of WordPress sites not updated in more than a year:
- Professional services (dentists, lawyers, accountants): 17%
- Restaurants: 12%
A professional practice's website often gets built once, when the practice opens or changes hands, and then left alone.
Page builders and older versions
60% of the WordPress sites use a page builder plugin. Elementor was the most common, on 39% of sites, followed by Divi and WPBakery. Page builders make a site easier to design, but they're one more piece of software that needs regular updates, and one more thing that can break when WordPress itself is updated.
Many sites hide their WordPress version, but of those that showed it, 26% were on a version older than 7.0. An old version number doesn't always mean a site is insecure, since some older releases still get security fixes, but it usually means nobody is looking after the site regularly.
Why websites go stale
It's rarely because nobody cares. In our experience, it comes down to friction:
- The person who knew the WordPress login has moved on.
- Small changes feel like they need a developer, and the developer costs money.
- People worry that clicking "Update" on a plugin will break the site, so they leave it.
So the new phone number waits, the holiday hours don't get posted, and the site slowly drifts out of date.
A different way to keep a site current
SiteFlo™ was built for exactly this. Your team updates the website from Slack, in plain language: "Add our holiday hours to the Contact page." You see the change, approve it, and it goes live, usually within minutes. There are no plugins to update and no login page to protect.
If your site is on WordPress today, we move it across for you, page for page, and keep your old links working.
Curious how your own site measures up? Run the free site check. It takes about a minute and looks at security, speed, accessibility, search visibility and upkeep.
About the numbers
"Last updated" means the most recent change to any page or post on the site. It shows when content last changed, not when the software was last updated. Sites where we couldn't find a date are left out of the percentages.