Redesign or repair
Worth being honest about, because a redesign is the more expensive answer and isn't always the right one.
Repair is probably enough when
- The site works and looks acceptable but has specific problems — slow images, a hard-to-find phone number, outdated content
- It's built on something current and maintainable
- The structure makes sense, the pages just need work
Redesign makes sense when
- It's genuinely broken on phones, where most of your visitors are
- It's built on abandoned software with no security updates
- It's slow at a structural level — see speed optimization
- The business has changed enough that the site describes a different company
- Nobody can update it, so it's frozen
- You need it to do things it fundamentally can't, like customer logins or booking
The redesign that makes things worse
A business rebuilds on a modern-looking platform. It looks better and gets fewer calls. Why: the new URLs don't match the old ones with no redirects, several pages that ranked were consolidated away, and the design-heavy build is slower on phones than the old site.
Everything visible improved. Everything that produced work got broken.
Protecting what already works
Before anything is designed, find out what the current site is doing right — because some of it is invisible and easy to destroy.
- Which pages get traffic and which produce contacts. Those pages carry value. Keep them, improve them, don't quietly delete them.
- What you rank for. Search Console shows the real queries. That's what to preserve.
- Every existing URL. Keep them identical where possible. Where they must change, a permanent redirect from old to new — one to one, not everything dumped on the homepage.
- Content that answers questions. An ugly page that ranks and converts is more valuable than a beautiful one that doesn't. Rewrite it, don't bin it.
- Anything connected. Forms feeding a system, tracking, integrations.
What should actually improve
A redesign that only changes appearance is a wasted opportunity. The things worth fixing at the same time:
- Mobile experience. Where most visitors are, and where most old sites fail.
- Speed. Rebuilding is the cheapest time to fix it properly.
- Clarity about what you do. Most old sites are vague in ways the owner stopped noticing.
- Ease of contact. Visible number, working forms, sensible routes.
- Content depth. Real pages for real services instead of one list.
- Room to grow. So the next need is an addition, not another rebuild — see web development.
How it runs without downtime
- Audit what exists — traffic, rankings, URLs, what converts
- Decide the structure, including what carries over
- Build separately while the current site stays live
- Migrate content, improving it rather than pasting it
- Map redirects for anything that moved
- Test on real devices, check every form actually delivers
- Launch, then submit an updated sitemap
- Watch rankings and traffic for a few weeks and fix anything that slipped
That last step gets skipped constantly. Problems from a migration show up over weeks, not on launch day, which is why ongoing attention matters most right after a change.
