Most redesigns start with 'it looks dated' and end with a prettier site that performs identically. Work through this instead.
A redesign is surgery. Done for the right reasons with the right preparation it transforms the patient; done because a competitor got a new site, it is expense and risk for nothing. The checklist below is the order we actually work in — and the first half of it happens before anyone opens a design tool.
The short version: diagnose before you demolish, protect what already works, and treat 'modern look' as the last item on the list rather than the first.
Slow on mobile, breaks on phones, wrong information, no enquiries, or a business that has outgrown what the site says. Looks alone rank fifth.
Which pages get traffic, which rank, which convert. You cannot protect what you have not measured.
Every old page address must point to its new home, or Google drops you and the traffic goes with it.
Pull the basics: what pages exist, which ones people actually visit, what you rank for, how fast the site loads on a real phone, and whether the contact form still delivers — a shocking number quietly stopped working years ago. Test the site on your own phone on mobile data, not office wifi. That is the site your customers meet.
Then decide what the new site is for in one sentence. More calls, more bookings, selling online, looking credible for bigger contracts — these produce different builds. A redesign without a stated job just redecorates.
The genuine risk in a redesign is throwing away rankings that took years to accumulate. Keep page addresses where you can; where they must change, map every old address to its new one with a permanent redirect. Keep the page titles and content that were winning, improve what was not, and resubmit the sitemap on launch day.
After launch, watch for a fortnight: form submissions arriving, rankings holding, speed scores where they should be. A redesign is done when the numbers say so, not when the new homepage goes live.
Straight answers. If yours is not here, call and ask.
If the structure is sound and the site is fast, updated content and a visual refresh may be all it needs — that is cheaper and lower-risk. If it is slow, broken on mobile, or built on a platform you cannot edit, rebuild.
Only if it is done carelessly. Redirects mapped, titles preserved, content carried over, sitemap resubmitted — done properly, speed and mobile improvements usually move rankings up, not down.
Ours usually go live within a week of receiving content and access. The audit adds a day or two up front and saves weeks of guessing.
Typically less than the original build, because the hard thinking — what you do, who buys, what to say — is already answered. Ours run in the same $600–5,000 fixed bands, quoted up front.
Tell us about the business and we'll come back with a fixed price and a timeline. No obligation, no sales pitch.