Before you read this, you should read my standard disclaimer.

I often find people trying to 'complete' a website, the way they would complete, say, a brochure printing project so that the never have to visit it again. Or at least for a long time to come.

The reasons for wanting to finish a brochure, down to the last detail, is because it is a often a batch job. You design the brochure, fill in the content, format it and send it off to the printer. You get a lot of 5,000 printed brochure, which you stack in a cabinet to distribute to potential clients.

Advantage: you get the benefit of each brochure costing less the higher the quantity you order.

A website, on the other hand, should never be thought of as a batch process. A good CMS will allow you to update content at will or post new content. Your CMS' theming mechanism should allow you to change the way your site looks at very short notice. It's just a matter of editing a few text files and images.

Web design trends keep shifting. New ways of sharing information keep popping up. New avenues for marketing. You just have to keep your website contemporary.

So when you see sites that have never been updated for ages, and look dated - it's probably because somebody 'completed' that web job so that they would never have to ever get back to it.