Website redesign for a site that is not earning its keep
Most redesigns change how a website looks and nothing about what it produces. If the current site is not generating enquiries, that is the problem worth fixing.
Rebuilding websites for businesses across the UK
Migrations planned so search visibility survives the move
Tracking and attribution set up before launch, not after
A redesign that only changes the design changes nothing
Most websites get replaced because somebody decided the old one looked dated. That is a reasonable feeling and a poor brief, because looking dated is rarely why a site fails to produce enquiries.
Sites underperform for duller reasons. The proposition is not clear in the first screen. The page never says who the business actually works with. There is no obvious next step. The enquiry form asks for too much, or too little to be useful. Nobody can tell which pages produce enquiries because nothing is measured.
Rebuild on the same foundations and you get a better looking site that performs exactly as badly as the old one, and the disappointment arrives about four months later.
| Source | Leads | Qualified | Revenue |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Ads | 142 | 88 | £61,400 |
| Organic search | 96 | 54 | £38,900 |
| Google Business Profile | 61 | 44 | £24,150 |
| Paid social | 38 | 19 | £9,800 |
What a redesign should actually fix
The visual work matters, but it is the smallest part of why the new site performs better than the old one.
What the site says
A clear proposition in the first screen, and honest qualification about who you work with. Fewer enquiries you did not want, more of the ones you did.
How it is structured
A page for each thing somebody searches, organised the way buyers think rather than the way the business is organised internally.
Whether it can be measured
Conversion tracking, call tracking and the source of every enquiry carried into your CRM. Built in before launch, because retrofitting it is harder.
What it is built on
A content management system your team can actually use, and a codebase that can be extended rather than replaced again in three years.
What happens to an enquiry
Where it lands, who sees it, how fast they respond. The best website in the world loses to a competitor who calls back first.
How fast it loads
Speed is a ranking input and a much larger conversion input. Most rebuilds we inherit are slower than the site they replaced.
The question is not whether the site looks dated. It is whether you can say which pages produce enquiries, and what each one costs you.
Redesigns lose rankings when nobody plans the migration
This is the part that goes wrong most often and the part clients are right to worry about. A site gets rebuilt, the URLs change, nothing is redirected, and three months of search visibility disappears. It is recoverable, slowly, and it should never happen.
Before anything is rebuilt we take a full inventory: every existing URL, what it ranks for, what it earns in Search Console, and where it should point afterwards. Pages that earn nothing get retired deliberately. Pages that earn something keep their URL or get a 301 to the closest equivalent.
Content that is genuinely working gets rewritten in place rather than replaced at a new address, so the years of accumulated signals come with it.
Lead types
Send these leads into Google
Lead outcomes
Only send conversions that have these outcomes
- Booked job
- Callback requested
- Interested, needs access
- Price not agreed
- Spam / bot
- Wrong number
- Job seeker
- Existing customer
From audit to launch
Audit what you have
Every URL, what it ranks for, what it earns, what converts. This regularly contradicts what everyone assumed, and it is what stops the rebuild throwing away something valuable.
Decide the structure
What pages should exist, what they need to say, and what to retire. Agreed before any design work, because structure decided late is expensive.
Design the system, not the pages
A set of sections your team can assemble into new pages without a developer, rather than a fixed set of templates you outgrow.
Build and connect
The site, the forms, the CRM connection, the tracking. Integrations scoped honestly rather than discovered halfway through.
Map every redirect
Old URL to new URL, checked against Search Console, in place before launch rather than after somebody notices the traffic has gone.
Launch and watch
Rankings, enquiries and speed monitored for the weeks after launch, with the baseline recorded beforehand so there is something to compare against.
You may not need a new website at all
Sometimes the honest answer is that the existing site is fine and the problem is somewhere else: nobody is driving traffic to it, the enquiries are arriving and not being followed up, or two pages need rewriting rather than forty being replaced.
A redesign keeps the platform and the structure, and changes how it looks and what it says. Faster, cheaper, and the right answer more often than agencies admit.
A rebuild replaces the foundations. Worth it when the site is slow and cannot be made fast, when the CMS fights your team every time they edit a page, when it cannot connect to the systems the business runs on, or when the structure itself is the reason it does not rank.
We will tell you which one you need, including when the answer is neither.
What people ask before a rebuild
Will we lose our Google rankings?
Not if the migration is planned. The risk is real and it comes from changing URLs without redirecting them. We inventory every URL and what it earns before anything is rebuilt, keep the ones that matter, and 301 the rest to the closest equivalent. Expect a short settling period after launch, not a collapse.
How long does a redesign take?
It depends far more on content and integrations than on design. The most common cause of a late project is waiting for copy and photography, so we agree up front who is writing what. A straightforward rebuild runs in weeks; one with real system integration behind it runs longer and we scope it before quoting.
What does it cost?
It depends on how much of the site is being replaced, how much content needs migrating, and what it has to connect to. Integration is usually the line that moves the number most, so we ask about your CRM and accounts early. We would rather give you an honest range with the reasoning than a figure that changes later.
Can we keep our existing content?
Usually some of it, and we will tell you which. Pages that earn clicks or impressions get kept and improved in place. Pages that earn nothing get retired rather than migrated, because carrying them across is work you pay for twice.
Do we have to move off our current platform?
Not necessarily. If the platform is not the problem, changing it is expensive disruption. We will say so.
Who owns the site when it is finished?
You do. The code, the design files and the hosting choice. Ask any agency this before you start, and treat a vague answer as information.
Before you commission anything
Four pieces we have written on the questions that come up before a rebuild starts.
Redesign, rebuild, or neither?
How to tell which of the three you need, including the cases where the money belongs somewhere else entirely.
Without losing your rankings
Why rebuilds lose search visibility, and the URL inventory and redirect map that prevent it.
What a redesign costs
What actually drives the number, what is usually excluded, and how to make competing quotes comparable.
The pre-redesign checklist
What to sort before briefing anyone, and what to check on launch day.
Get in touch about redesigning your website
Send us the URL. We will tell you what the site currently earns, what is holding it back, and whether a redesign, a rebuild or neither is the right answer.
