When and How to Redesign a Business Website

What are the signs a business website needs a redesign?

A website rarely breaks all at once. It drifts: the business changes, the people visiting it change, and the technology underneath it ages. A redesign is worth considering when one or more of these is true.

• It no longer reflects the business. You have new services, a new brand or a new market, and the site still describes the company you were a few years ago.
• It is hard to use on a phone. Text is small, buttons are close together, pages need sideways scrolling, or forms are awkward to fill in on a small screen.
• It is slow. Pages take a long time to appear, especially on mobile connections, and visitors leave before they see what you offer.
• Visitors cannot find what they came for. Customers phone or message to ask things the site should answer, such as what a service includes or where an order is.
• It is difficult to update. Small changes need a developer, or nobody remembers how the site was built.
• It does not lead anywhere. The site describes the business but gives visitors no clear next step, such as requesting a quote, booking or buying.
• The technology is out of date. The platform, theme or plugins are no longer maintained, which makes every update riskier.

What is the difference between a redesign, a rebuild and a migration?

The three words are often used interchangeably, but they describe different amounts of change. Knowing which one you need makes conversations with any web team clearer, and it is the first thing a good team will try to establish.

How do you protect search rankings during a redesign?

A redesign can cost you search visibility if it is handled carelessly. The usual cause is not the new design itself but changed addresses: pages that used to rank move to new URLs, the old URLs return errors, and search engines treat the new pages as if they were new. The fixes are routine, provided they are planned before launch rather than after.

• List every URL on the current site, including pages that get little traffic, and note which ones bring in search visitors.
• Map each old URL to its new equivalent, and set up permanent redirects so visitors and search engines land on the right page.
• Keep the content that ranks. If a page answers a question well today, carry its substance over instead of rewriting it from scratch.
• Carry over page titles, descriptions and structured data, and improve them where they are weak rather than dropping them.
• Submit the new sitemap to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, and check for crawl errors after launch.
• Watch impressions and positions for the main pages over the following weeks, and fix any page that drops.

What does the redesign process look like?

Every project is shaped by the site in front of us, but a redesign usually moves through the same stages.

Should you keep your current design or start fresh?

It depends on how well your customers know the current site. If people return to it often, for example to check an order or find a service, changing everything at once can make it harder for them to use, even if the new design is better in isolation. If the site is rarely visited or no longer represents the business, starting fresh is usually the better choice.

The BM Express case study is an example of the first approach. BM Express is a shipping and customs-clearance company whose customers already knew its website. We rebuilt it as a React application on Next.js and kept the original theme and page structure on purpose, so returning customers still find things where they expect them. Underneath, we modernized the sections, the Arabic typography and the layout on phones, and added self-service order tracking.

What do we need from you to start a redesign?

A redesign goes faster and costs less to scope when the following is ready at the start:

• Access to the current site, its hosting or platform account, and its domain settings.
• Access to Google Search Console or Bing Webmaster Tools, if you have them, so we can see which pages bring in visitors.
• What is wrong with the current site, in your words and, where possible, in your customers' words.
• What must stay: pages, features, content or parts of the design your customers rely on.
• Any new services, branding or content the new site needs to include.
• One person who gives feedback and approvals, and your target date.

How long does a redesign take, and what does it cost?

Both depend on the size of the site, how much of the structure changes, whether the platform changes, and how much content and data has to move. A redesign that keeps the platform and most of the content is usually smaller than a rebuild or a migration, but there is no fixed figure that applies to every site.

Our guides on what affects website cost and how long it takes to build a website explain what moves each one. We quote every redesign individually, with no fixed packages.

How can Novatrix Digital help with your redesign?

We redesign outdated websites and migrate sites between platforms, including to Shopify, while keeping your content and protecting your search rankings. You work directly with the engineers who do the work, SEO and GEO are part of every project, and we stay on after launch to maintain the site.

Read more about our website redesign and migration service, or tell us about your current site and we will reply with a free, no-commitment quote.