How old does your website look? What Website Age measures
Visitors judge a website in a fraction of a second, and an old-looking site costs trust before anyone reads a word. Website Age dates what your site is built with and tells you which year it feels like.
On this page
Nobody checks the copyright line in your footer. They don’t have to. Within a second of landing on a page, visitors already have a feeling about it: fresh and looked after, or a bit dusty. That feeling decides whether they trust what they read next.
Website Age puts a year on that feeling.
Every site has a birth year
A website is built from parts, and almost every part has a date. A JavaScript library has version numbers. A CSS framework changed its look with every major release. Fonts went in and out of fashion. Image formats came along at known times. Even the way the HTML is written shows when it was written.
Website Age looks at those parts and gives each one a year and a weight. A framework that shapes the whole page counts more than one small script. The year in the middle of all those signals, with the weights taken into account, is the year your site feels like.
What it looks at
- Frameworks and libraries: which version of jQuery, Bootstrap or Font Awesome the site loads, and when that version came out.
- The HTML: old document types, table layouts, inline styles and tags that modern sites stopped using years ago.
- Fonts: system fonts, web fonts and how they are loaded.
- Images: old formats only, or modern ones such as WebP and AVIF, and whether pictures adapt to the screen.
- The domain: how long the address has been around, as a light signal only.
The report lists every signal it found with its year, so you can see exactly what makes the site feel older than it is.
Why a redesign doesn’t always reset the clock
A common surprise: “But we redesigned in 2022!” A new look on top of an old foundation still loads the old parts. If the new theme kept the 2015 framework and the 2013 icon set, Website Age will notice. Visitors may not know the version numbers, but they notice the small things those old parts bring: menus that behave oddly on a phone, icons that look slightly off, pages that shift while loading.
How Age counts in the score
Age is one of the ten gauges. A site that feels like this year or last year keeps a full Age score. After that, every extra year costs points. Age matters most in one place: the verdict. A site that feels very old and scores low on Design gets the advice to start over instead of patching.
How to make a site feel younger
- Update the foundation first. A current framework version often fixes mobile quirks and speed at the same time.
- Drop what you don’t use. Many sites load three libraries for one slider. Every old file you remove is one old signal less.
- Serve modern images. WebP or AVIF, in sizes that fit the screen, look sharper and load faster.
- Replace the icon set. Old icon fonts are one of the clearest age signals, and a modern set is a small job.
- Scan again. The report shows the new year next to the old one.
Try it on your own site
Scan your website and look for the line “Website Age: feels like …”. If the year surprises you, the list of signals under it shows why.
We DesignScan your website with our self developed tools for: design flaws, usability, GUI, images, code age, a.o., and report back to you with a detailed report on- and off-line.
