A website should be redesigned when it no longer does its job: attracting visitors, reassuring them and turning them into leads. On average, a professional website lives four to five years before its design, technology and content start to hold it back. Here are the ten unmistakable signs, then the method to succeed with a redesign without losing your rankings.
The 10 signs a redesign is needed
1. Your website is unreadable on mobile
More than 65% of visits come from a phone. If your visitors have to zoom, if the buttons are too small or if the menu does not open, they leave. Google, which indexes the mobile version first, downgrades you.
2. It takes more than three seconds to load
Test your home page with PageSpeed Insights. Below a score of 50 on mobile, speed costs visitors and rankings. The usual causes: uncompressed images, bloated theme, undersized hosting.
3. You do not appear on Google for your trade and your city
Type "your trade + your city". If your competitors are on the first page and you are not, your website lacks content, structure or authority. An SEO audit pinpoints the cause.
4. The design visibly dates
Automatic slider, centred text on a gradient background, default fonts, stock photos seen everywhere: your visitor judges your credibility in three seconds.
5. You no longer receive requests through the website
A website that generates no leads per month is not a website, it is an online business card. The problem often comes from the absence of clear calls to action and a form that is too long.
6. You cannot edit the content yourself
If every text change goes through a provider, you stop updating the website. A modern CMS such as WordPress makes you independent.
7. The website is not secure
No HTTPS padlock, extensions not updated for years, unprotected form: your website is an open door, and Google flags it to your visitors.
8. Your offer has changed, your website has not
New services, new target, new positioning: if the website tells the story of the company five years ago, it works against you.
9. Your competitors have pulled ahead
Compare five competitor websites with yours: clarity of the offer, proof (reviews, work), ease of contact. If you lose on three criteria, it is time.
10. The website connects to nothing
No appointment booking, no link with your management tool, no conversion tracking: you are flying blind.
Redesign or simple update?
| Situation | Solution | Indicative budget |
|---|---|---|
| Decent design, up-to-date content, average speed | Technical optimisation and maintenance | €200 to €600 |
| Dated design, sound structure | Graphic redesign (new theme, same content) | €850 to €1,500 |
| Obsolete design and content, fragile technology | Complete redesign with migration | €1,200 to €4,000 |
| New positioning, new features | Complete redesign and custom development | On quote |
Succeeding with the redesign without losing your rankings
This is the main risk: a website redesigned without precautions can lose 30 to 70% of its traffic in a few weeks. Our six-step method avoids it.
- Inventory of all existing URLs and their Google rankings.
- Retention of the pages that generate traffic, rewriting of weak pages, removal of duplicates.
- 301 redirect plan from every old URL to the new one, without exception.
- New mock-up designed for conversion: clear offer, proof, calls to action, short form, WhatsApp.
- Go-live after testing on mobile, speed, forms and tags.
- Monitoring for three months: rankings, crawl errors, conversions.
Key takeaway: a successful redesign is judged on three figures: mobile speed, rankings kept or gained, and the number of leads received per month.
What a redesign includes at Webi Studio
Audit of the existing site, new custom design, content migration, redirects, SEO optimisation, training and one month of follow-up, from €850. Agencies entrust these projects to us white-label. See our work, the pricing grid, or ask for a free audit of your current website.