01 / Service
Website redesign
The site works, technically. It also takes six seconds on a phone, hides what you sell three scrolls down, and nobody has been able to change it since the person who built it stopped answering.
Definition
A site that brings you work again, and that you can actually change. The rebuild starts with what the site is for and what each page has to do. The look comes after that. Most redesigns fail because they repaint a layout when the layout was never the problem.
Fit
You are probably in the right place if:
- The site was built by an agency or contractor who has since disappeared.
- People arrive and leave without calling, booking or buying.
- Nobody on your team can change it without asking someone else.
- Every update feels like it might break something.
Scope
- A pass over your content and page structure before any design starts
- Design of the handful of page layouts the site actually needs
- Built by hand, with no page builder to lock you out of it later
- Every old web address either kept or forwarded, checked after launch
- Your traffic history and Google reporting carried across intact
- Speed and accessibility built in, not added as a later phase
Sequence
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01
Read the current site
Go through every page and the real traffic figures to find what is earning its place. Most sites carry pages nobody has opened in two years.
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02
Fix the structure
What the site is for, what each page has to do, and what order a stranger meets them in. This is where a redesign is won or lost.
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03
Design the layouts
Not every page. The five or six layouts that produce every page, so the site stays consistent as it grows.
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04
Build and measure
Built by hand, then measured against real targets before launch. If it is slower than what it replaced, it does not ship.
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05
Switch it over
Old addresses forwarded, forms tested on the live site, then a week of watching for anything missed.
Effort
What actually moves the number.
The honest answer to what it costs is that it depends on these. Read them and you will know roughly where your job sits before anyone quotes you anything.
- How many layouts, not how many pages
- Two hundred pages built from six layouts is a smaller job than twelve pages that are all different.
- Whether the words and photos exist
- Writing the copy and sourcing photography is the single biggest schedule risk on a redesign.
- What is bolted on
- Booking systems, member logins and product feeds each add their own work and testing.
- The state of the old addresses
- A tidy set maps over in an afternoon. Ten years of ad hoc ones takes longer and matters more.
FAQ
Will my search rankings drop?
Not if every old address forwards to the right new one and the content survives. Rankings drop when addresses change without forwarding, or when pages get deleted in a cull. Both are planned for before anything moves.
Can I keep WordPress?
Yes, and sometimes you should, particularly if you publish several times a week. If the site is nine pages that change twice a year, WordPress is a maintenance job you pay for with your time. That conversation happens early, not after the build.
How long does it take?
Usually four to eight weeks. The variable is almost never the building. It is how quickly content and approvals come back.
What happens to my old site?
Archived off the server and kept for ninety days. Nothing is deleted on launch day.
Next
Tell us what is wrong with it.
The quote form arrives with website redesign already selected. It starts with the site rather than with you, so the first step costs you nothing.