A website redesign is almost always decided for good reasons: an ageing site, an image that no longer matches the business, enquiries that have stalled. The project is then carried out with care, and it succeeds on every count but one — the one that prompted it. What follows explains why, and which questions to ask before committing the budget.
The budget is approved, the agency chosen, the project run properly. The new site is faster, clearer, undeniably better looking. Six months later, enquiries have not moved.
This happens often enough to deserve an explanation other than poor delivery. The project succeeded. It was the question that was wrong.
What a redesign actually fixes
- a technically obsolete site, expensive to maintain
- a layout unreadable on mobile
- updates impossible without going through an agency
- load times that make visitors leave
- a dated image, out of step with the standing of the business
These problems are real, and a redesign fixes them for good. One notes only that none of them explains a shortage of enquiries.
What it does not fix
If visitors cannot tell within ten seconds what you sell and to whom, a faster site will simply let them not understand faster. A redesign improves the vehicle; it does not change the message it carries.
A rebuilt site does not say any better what the business has not decided to say.
The same holds for the numbers: a conversion rate is optimised on a proposition that was never settled. The gain is real but marginal, and it plateaus quickly.
The questions to ask before a website redesign
The first ones concern strategy. They fit on one page, and none of them is about the website:
- Who is it primarily for — not “anyone who might be interested”.
- Who we stop addressing. A positioning is measured by what it makes you give up.
- What action is expected of the visitor — one only.
- How we will know it is working, before the budget has been spent.
Those four answers fit on one page. They rarely take less than three weeks to obtain, because they require decisions nobody wants to make.
Then come more practical questions, too often discovered halfway through the project:
- Content. What exists, what is kept, and who will write the new material? It is the item quotes most underestimate, and the one that delays the most launches — it is often where what really drives the price of a redesign lies.
- Existing search rankings. Which pages bring visitors from search engines today, and how will they be preserved? The steps for keeping search rankings are planned before the mock-up, not after launch.
- Describing the need. How will the project be presented to suppliers? A specification that describes the problem rather than the list of pages makes the responses comparable.
- Afterwards. Who will update the site once delivered, with which tool, and after what training?
The right order costs less
A rebuild arbitrates under deadline pressure what should have been settled in the cold. Four questions are enough, and none of them is about the site.
It is the same mechanism as digital transformation: naming a means excuses you from naming an end.
Run in that order, the web project moves faster: most of the decisions are already made, and the back and forth over mock-ups disappears. Run the other way, it drags on in arguments about aesthetics — a sign that colours are being decided for want of having decided the strategy.
It is the order in which Maeliom Build works: a site is designed from a decision already taken, never in its place.
Common questions
How long does a website redesign take?
It depends less on the size of the site than on the state of decisions at the outset. A project whose audience, message and content are settled moves fast; one that discovers them along the way drags on in rounds of mock-up revisions.
Should a site be rebuilt to improve its search rankings?
Not necessarily. A redesign can improve a site’s speed, structure and technical legibility, but it can also lose rankings if old addresses are not redirected. Search visibility has to be prepared as a stage of the project, not expected as a side effect.
Full redesign or a simple update: how to choose?
If the problem is technical — a slow site, unreadable on mobile, impossible to update — a redesign is justified. If the problem is that the site generates no enquiries, first check that the offer and the audience are clear: a redesign will not change that.