Why redesign your website: the reasons and the signs
A website ages faster than you think. Here are the reasons that justify a redesign, the signs to watch for, and the cases where a simple update is enough.
A website redesign is a heavy project: it takes a team and a budget, and it puts your rankings at risk. It is justified when the site no longer serves its goals and an update is no longer enough. This article helps you make that diagnosis. To then run the project, see our guide to website redesign and its impact on SEO.
The reasons to redesign a site
An image that no longer fits the company
The website is often the first contact with a customer. A dated design, an abandoned visual identity, a brand that has changed its name or positioning give an image that no longer fits the company. When the change also affects the name or the domain, see migration after an acquisition or a rebrand.
An offer or audiences that have changed
New products, new services, new markets, new languages: when the site structure can no longer present the offer clearly, adding pages is not enough, the structure has to be rethought. It is also the time to add what is missing, such as an online shop or a blog.
A degraded user experience
Most visits happen on mobile, and Google indexes the mobile version of pages first. A site that is hard to read on a phone, slow to load or confusing to navigate drives visitors away and weighs on rankings. When fixes pile up without solving the underlying problem, a redesign becomes the cheaper option.
Technology that holds you back
A CMS that is no longer maintained, abandoned extensions, security flaws, code that nobody can evolve any more, or a tool that forces you to call on a contractor for every change: technology becomes a brake. Changing tools is then the main purpose of the redesign; see the CMS change procedure.
Falling results
Organic traffic that erodes, a conversion rate that slips, competitors ranking higher on your queries: these signs first call for an analysis. The cause may be ageing content, a structure that scatters pages across the same topics, or a site that is technically behind. A redesign is one possible answer, provided you know what it must fix.
Signs to watch for
A few simple questions help you decide:
- does the site give a faithful picture of the company and its current offer?
- does it display correctly and quickly on mobile?
- can you edit a text or add a page without calling on a developer?
- are the CMS and its extensions still maintained and up to date?
- have organic traffic and conversions been stable over the last twelve months?
- do your competitors offer a much simpler journey than yours?
Several unfavourable answers argue for a redesign; a single one often calls for a targeted fix.
When a redesign is not needed
Not every problem calls for a redesign. A design that needs refreshing can be handled while keeping the structure and URLs, which removes most of the SEO risk; weak content can be rewritten page by page; a slow site can often be optimised without rebuilding everything. A full redesign is for cases where the structure, the tool or the image can no longer evolve. See also the reasons to migrate a website.
What comes next
Once the decision is made, three workstreams open up: bringing the skills together (see how to build the redesign team), writing the specification and running the project without losing the rankings you have earned, by preparing the redirect plan before go-live.
Redesign decided? Swan prepares the redirect plan between the old and the new site, so you keep the traffic you have earned.
