Website redesign: where to start?

When should you redesign?

Three signs don't lie: you are embarrassed by your site when you send it to a prospect, it generates no incoming enquiries, or it is impossible to change without calling someone. One is enough; all three together cost you customers every week.

On the other hand, don't redesign for the sake of it: if the site converts well, a targeted change is sometimes better than a rebuild. A quick audit helps you decide.

Step 1: audit what exists

Before tearing down, take stock. Which pages get traffic from Google? Which ones convert? Which content deserves to be kept? This audit decides what we keep, what we improve and what we remove.

Step 2: set the objectives

A redesign with no objective produces a prettier site that is just as ineffective. Define the metric that matters: quote requests per month, calls, sales. Every structure and design choice must then serve that objective.

• Who are the 2 or 3 priority visitor profiles?
• What action should each one take?
• What is stopping them today?

Step 3: protect your search rankings

This is what separates a successful redesign from a silent disaster. Every URL that changes must be redirected (301 redirect) to its new address. Tags, high-performing content and internal links are transferred methodically.

• Map all existing URLs before the work starts
• Prepare the redirect plan page by page
• Keep the content that ranks, even if reworked
• Check indexing in Search Console after the switch

Step 4: the right process

The healthy process: scoping and audit, then mock-ups approved page by page (feedback costs hours on a mock-up, days on a finished site), then build, then the switch with redirects and checks. With us, this full cycle takes 14 days.

Redesign or rebuild: two different jobs

The word redesign covers two operations with neither the same cost nor the same risks. Telling them apart from the start avoids paying for the wrong one.

• A redesign, in the strict sense, builds on what exists: your content, your site structure, your addresses. We change the design, fix the structure and improve the speed. The search rankings you have earned are kept, which is the main advantage.
• A rebuild starts from scratch: new site structure, new content, new addresses. It is justified when the business has changed, when the target audience is no longer the same, or when the existing site has nothing worth saving.

The most common case lies in between: we keep what ranks and rebuild the rest. That is exactly what the audit must decide, page by page, before a single mock-up is drawn.

Choosing the wrong job has a measurable cost: launching a rebuild when a redesign was enough loses search rankings that will take months to recover.

The inventory to do before touching the site

This step is the least spectacular and the most profitable. It is done before, never during, and everything else depends on it.

• The full list of your addresses. Every page on the current site, including the ones you had forgotten. A sitemap and your search engine's tracking tools will give you this.
• The pages that bring in visits. Traffic isn't spread evenly: a few pages often do most of the work. These are the ones to keep as a priority, address included.
• The pages that receive external links. A link from a business directory, a press article or a partner has value. If the page disappears without a redirect, that value disappears too.
• Reusable content. Copy, site photos, client references, testimonials. Many redesigns pay again for copywriting that already existed.
• What doesn't work. Forms that don't get through, pages with no visits for two years, duplicates. A redesign is a chance to remove things, not just add them.

Keep this inventory in a single spreadsheet. It will serve as the reference throughout the project, and as the basis for the redirect plan.

The redirect plan, in practice

This is the document that protects your search rankings on go-live day. Its principle is simple: every old address must lead to its closest equivalent on the new site, through a permanent redirect.

• One row per address. Old address in one column, new address in the other. No row should be left empty.
• A permanent redirect, not a temporary one. That is what passes the credit you have earned on to the new page.
• No mass redirects to the home page. Sending fifty pages to the home page is treated as a page not found, and defeats the purpose of the redirect.
• No chains. An address that redirects to an address that redirects in turn slows everything down and degrades over time.
• A check after go-live. Test the addresses on the list, not just a few at random.

If you keep the same site structure, this work is minimal. If you change it, it becomes the centrepiece of the project, and it is the first thing to ask about in a redesign quote.

The thirty days after go-live

A redesign doesn't end at go-live. The following month is when problems surface, and when they are still easy to fix.

• Monitor pages not found. They point to forgotten redirects. Fix them as you go rather than waiting for a review.
• Check that form submissions arrive. Send yourself a test message from each form, including from a phone. It is the most frequent and most costly failure.
• Monitor your rankings. Some movement in the first weeks is normal, while search engines recrawl the site. A drop that persists beyond a month needs a diagnosis.
• Gather feedback from real users. Your customers and your teams spot in a week what no internal testing had seen.
• Check the speed on mobile, in real conditions, not just on the office computer connected to fibre.

What makes a redesign fail

Redesigns that go off track almost always fail for the same reasons, and none of them is technical.

• Redesigning without knowing why. A site you no longer like is not an objective. A site that generates no enquiries is one, and it leads to different decisions.
• Waiting for content. The project is ready, the copy doesn't arrive, the job drags on for six months. It is the main cause of delay, on both sides.
• Too many decision-makers. Beyond two contacts on the company side, the feedback contradicts itself and the project slows down. Appoint one person who decides.
• Neglecting redirects. It is the only item whose omission costs you visibility, for months, without the cause being obvious.
• Changing everything at once. Design, site structure, content, tool, host: if everything moves at the same time and traffic drops, you won't know what caused it.

The budget for a redesign, and why it varies

A redesign is priced differently from a new build, because part of the work is taking over what exists rather than starting from a blank page. Three factors explain most of the differences.

• The number of pages to take over. This is the first job, and the most linear. An eight-page site and a forty-page site don't need the same migration work.
• The state of the content. Copy that can be reused as it is, copy to rewrite, or copy to produce from scratch: between these three cases, the budget can double.
• How much the site structure changes. Keeping the structure makes redirects trivial. Redoing it entirely turns the redirect plan into a job in its own right.

Our budget calculator prices these three factors on our real rates, and our page on the price of a website breaks the cost down item by item. In both cases, the price given after the scoping session doesn't change.

Who needs to be involved on your side

A redesign demands more of the company than people expect. Identifying the roles before the launch avoids half the delays.

• A single decision-maker. The person who approves the mock-ups and settles the trade-offs. With more than one, the feedback contradicts itself and the project gets bogged down.
• A content provider. The person who holds the business knowledge, the photos, the client references, the up-to-date figures. In a small company this is often the same person as the decision-maker, and that is where the bottleneck forms.
• A proofreader. Someone who checks the copy with fresh eyes, in particular the legal notice, the names of services and the contact details.
• A tester from outside the project. Someone who hasn't followed the project and tries to find a piece of information or fill in the form. Their hesitations are worth more than any report.

Also set aside real time in people's diaries. A redesign that has no time anywhere moves at the speed of the time it is given, however responsive the provider is.

Redesigning without taking the current site offline

One concern always comes up: what happens during the work, when the existing site is still receiving visits and enquiries? The answer is that nothing should happen at all.

• The new site is built on a separate working address, invisible to search engines and the public. Your current site keeps working normally for the whole duration of the job.
• The switch is a short operation, once the new site has been approved. It is best scheduled for a low-traffic slot.
• The redirect plan is prepared and tested before the switch, not after. That is what avoids the limbo period when visitors land on pages that can't be found.
• The old site is kept as a full backup. If there is a major problem, rolling back remains possible, and knowing that door exists makes launch day much calmer.

Ask explicitly for these four points in a redesign quote. Their absence doesn't mean they won't be done, but it does mean they weren't thought through in advance.