Ten Signs Your Business Website Needs a Redesign (and Three That Are Just Nerves)

“Does my website need a redesign?” is usually asked at one of two moments: after a quiet month, or after seeing a rival’s new site. Neither is a good reason on its own. A redesign costs time and money, and it disrupts a site that Google may have taken years to understand. So it is worth separating the signs that genuinely mean the site is failing from the ones that are just a feeling.

Here are ten of the first kind, three of the second, and a way to decide what to do next.

Ten signs the site genuinely needs work

1. It does not work properly on a phone

Most local searches now happen on a phone, and a customer who has to pinch, zoom and scroll sideways will leave. Open your own site on your phone and try to find the phone number and the services list. If it is awkward for you, it is impossible for a stranger. This is the most common and the most costly failure, and it is not fixable with a tweak if the site was built before mobile was the priority.

2. There is no padlock

If the address bar shows “Not secure” instead of a padlock, the site has no SSL certificate. Browsers warn visitors about it, Google treats it as a mark against the site, and some customers will not submit a form without it. On a properly hosted site this is routine; on an old one it can be a sign that nobody has touched the hosting in years.

3. The services are out of date

You stopped doing bathroom fitting two years ago but it is still the second item on the services page. You now offer heat pump installation and the site has never heard of it. A site that describes the business you used to be sends customers to the wrong place and tells Google the wrong story about which searches you belong in.

4. It is slow

Large uncompressed photographs, an old theme carrying twenty plugins, hosting that was fine in 2016. If pages take more than a few seconds to appear on a phone signal, customers give up before they see anything. Speed is often the most improvable thing about an old site, and sometimes the only thing that genuinely needs changing.

5. Nobody can update it

The person who built it has moved on. The login is lost. The builder platform it sits on is a mystery. When a price change or a new phone number needs a specialist and a fortnight, the site stops being updated, and an unmaintained site decays quietly. If you cannot get a change made within a week, that is a structural problem rather than a design one.

6. It does not say where you work

A site that never names a town cannot appear for “service plus place” searches, and a customer cannot tell whether you cover them. This is astonishingly common on trade sites built from templates. The fix is usually an areas page and clear wording on the home page, which does not require a redesign, but if the structure makes that impossible, it is a sign the structure is wrong.

7. It looks nothing like the business

You have a new van, new workwear, a logo you are proud of, and a website with the colours a designer chose in 2018. Customers notice mismatches. A site should look like the business a customer will meet, and if the gap is wide enough that you would rather they did not see it, it has become a liability.

8. It is built on something that is dying

Some website builders close down or stop supporting old plans. Some themes stop receiving updates and become security risks. If the platform beneath the site is no longer maintained, every month you wait makes the eventual move harder. This is one of the reasons we build on WordPress and explain why it is still the sensible choice for most small businesses.

9. Customers tell you they could not find something

“I couldn’t see if you did commercial work.” “I couldn’t find your number.” “I wasn’t sure if you covered Hove.” Every one of those comments is a customer who nearly did not ring, and for each who mentions it there are several who did not. Listen for them; they are the most reliable audit you will ever get.

10. You are embarrassed to send the link

If you hesitate before putting the web address on a quote, an invoice or the side of the van, the site is not doing the one job a site has: representing you when you are not in the room. That instinct is usually right.

Three signs that are just nerves

A competitor has a new site

Their new site tells you nothing about whether yours is working. If your phone rings and your site answers the customer’s questions, a rival’s redesign is their expense, not your problem. Look at your own site against the ten signs above, not against theirs.

A design trend has moved on

Trends move every couple of years. Customers do not. A clear, fast, honest site in last year’s style beats a fashionable one that hides the phone number. Refresh photographs and copy as the business changes; do not chase the look of the moment.

Someone said it needs more animation

It almost never does. Movement that explains something can help; movement for its own sake slows the site, distracts from the call button and dates fast. If the person suggesting it is trying to sell it to you, that is worth noticing.

Redesign, rebuild or refresh?

Once you know which signs apply, there are three honest options.

• Refresh. The structure is sound, the platform is maintained and the site works on a phone. Update the services, the photographs, the areas wording and the credentials. This is a few small changes rather than a project, and on a managed plan it is usually covered as part of the monthly service.
• Rebuild on the same platform. The platform is fine but the site is old, slow or badly structured. A new site on a maintained WordPress build keeps the address and the history and fixes the fundamentals.
• Move platform. The site is on a builder that is dying, that you cannot leave with your content, or that nobody can update. Moving is more effort but it is the only fix that lasts. Do it once, properly, and keep the same domain so nothing that points at you is lost.

Before any of the three, it is worth reading what a small business website actually needs, so the new version is judged on the right things, and looking at the standard of site we build to see what a rebuild produces.

What a redesign should not change

Two things are worth protecting through any rebuild. The first is the domain name: keep it, because every review, directory listing and recommendation points at it. The second is the addresses of pages that already appear in Google. If your old site had a page at /services/boilers/ that customers find, the new site should either keep that address or redirect it. A redesign that throws both away starts from zero, and there is no reason to.

Questions people ask

How often should a small business website be redesigned?

There is no fixed interval. A site that is maintained, updated as the business changes and works well on a phone can run for many years. Redesign when the signs above apply, not on a calendar.

Will a redesign hurt my Google rankings?

It can, if page addresses change without redirects or if the new site says less than the old one about what you do and where. Done carefully, keeping the domain and the important pages, it should not, and fixing speed and mobile problems usually helps.

Can I keep my domain name if I move to a new web company?

Yes, provided you own it. Check that the domain is registered in your name or your business’s name, not the previous designer’s, before you do anything else. If it is not, recover it first.

Is it worth redesigning if I only get work from recommendations?

Recommended customers still look you up. If the site is one of the ten signs, especially the phone or the padlock, it weakens recommendations you have already earned. A modest, current site protects them.

Treat the redesign question as a diagnosis rather than a mood. Ten real signs, three false ones, and a site that either answers a customer’s questions on a phone or does not. Everything else is decoration.