Redesign or not
Usually the honest answer is no, and something cheaper will do. Sometimes the honest answer is yes, and patching it further is wasted money. This page is the test I run before quoting anyone.
Start with evidence, not with a feeling
A redesign fixes design problems. It does not fix a traffic problem, a pricing problem, or a follow-up problem, and it is an expensive way to find that out.
If almost nobody visits, redesigning will change almost nothing, because the same nobody will see the new one. That is a search visibility problem. If plenty of people visit and none of them call, that is a conversion problem, and a redesign is a reasonable answer. Your analytics tell you which within about two minutes.
From a cold start: find your phone number, find your prices or how pricing works, and find whether you serve their town. If any of those takes more than about fifteen seconds or requires pinching to zoom, you have found something worth fixing regardless of what you decide about a redesign.
Speed, a valid certificate, a form that actually delivers, and pages that are indexed by Google. Every one of those affects whether the site works, all of them are cheaper than a redesign, and all of them will still need doing after a redesign anyway. Fix them first and reassess.
If changing a price or an opening hour means emailing someone and waiting three days, the site is out of date permanently, by design. That is a genuine reason to rebuild even when everything else about the site is fine, because the cost of the current setup is paid every month forever.
A site on an unsupported platform or an abandoned theme is a security problem waiting to happen and cannot be safely maintained. If your host is warning you about an old PHP version, or the theme has not been updated in years, the decision is being made for you.
Open them side by side with yours. Not to copy the look, but to see what they cover that you do not: a page per service, prices or ranges, service areas stated plainly, real photos of real work. Often the gap is content, not design, and content is much cheaper to add than a site is to rebuild.
Some of these justify a rebuild on their own. Most do not, and get quoted as one anyway.
Rebuild, usually
How to check: You have to pinch and zoom to read a paragraph, the buttons are too small to hit, or the menu does not open. Check on a real phone, not a resized browser window.
The fix: If the theme was built before mobile mattered, retrofitting is usually more expensive than rebuilding. Most of the people finding a local business are on a phone, so this is not a cosmetic issue.
Rebuild
How to check: Updating a price, an hour, or a photo requires someone else. The hours on your site have been wrong since a holiday two years ago and it was never worth the phone call.
The fix: This one compounds. Everything about the site drifts out of date because keeping it current has a cost every single time. Rebuild on something you can edit.
Fix, not a rebuild
How to check: Run a speed test. If the problem is oversized images, no caching, or plugin bloat, that is a maintenance job.
The fix: Fix the speed. A new site built without attention to the same issues will be slow too, which is a thing that genuinely happens.
Depends
How to check: Ask whether a customer would notice, or only you. Then ask whether the dated look is costing you calls, or just bothering you. Both are valid, but they justify different budgets.
The fix: A design refresh over the existing structure is often enough and costs meaningfully less. Reserve a full rebuild for when the structure is wrong too.
Rebuild
How to check: You do five things and the site covers two. Or the site is organized around a business you have moved on from. Search visibility follows structure, so this shows up in rankings as well as in confusion.
The fix: Rebuild around what you sell now, one page per service. This is the version of a redesign that reliably pays for itself.
Not a design problem
How to check: Analytics show single-digit daily visits. Redesigning will not change that, because the number of people who see the new one is the same number who see this one.
The fix: Search visibility and local listings first. Come back to the redesign question once people are actually arriving.
Fix today
How to check: Submit your own form and see if it arrives. Check the spam folder. Broken forms are startlingly common, and they fail silently, so nobody learns until someone mentions it in person.
The fix: Fix the form now, whatever you decide about the rest. Every day it stays broken is leads going nowhere.
The question is almost never redesign or nothing. It is which of these four, and the difference between them is thousands of dollars.
Right when: The site converts, it works on a phone, you can edit it, and it is not costing you anything.
Rough cost: Nothing
Watch out for: Being bored of your own website is not a business reason. You look at it a hundred times more often than any customer does.
Right when: The bones are fine. It is slow, or the form is broken, or three pages are missing, or the phone number is wrong on mobile.
Rough cost: Hours, not a project
Watch out for: If the list of specific things passes about a dozen items, you are describing a rebuild in installments.
Right when: The content and URLs are right, but it looks a decade old and does not reflect the business you are now.
Rough cost: Less than a rebuild, more than a fix
Watch out for: Only works if the underlying platform is still supported and still editable. A new coat of paint on rotten wood is a waste.
Right when: The structure is wrong, the platform is dead or unmaintained, nobody can edit it, or it cannot be made fast or usable on a phone.
Rough cost: A project with a start and a launch date
Watch out for: Keep the URLs. Redirect every old address to its new equivalent, or you hand back the search rankings you spent years earning.
Most of the damage done by redesigns is self-inflicted and preventable. Insist on all five.
Free website assessment
Scores whether your site converts: calls to action, trust signals, mobile experience, readability.
OpenWebsite speed test
Rules out the cheapest explanation before anyone quotes you for a rebuild.
OpenWeb design
What a build with me involves, and what is included. Start here if the answer turned out to be yes.
OpenHow much should a website cost?
Real ranges and what actually drives the number, so you can judge the quotes you get.
OpenWebsite not showing up on Google
If the problem is that nobody arrives, fix that before you redesign what they would have seen.
OpenWebsite maintenance plans
The alternative to redesigning every four years because nobody looked after it in between.
OpenThere is no schedule, and anyone quoting one is selling. A site that is maintained, fast, editable, and organized around what you actually sell can run for a long time. A site that is none of those things needs work now, whether it is one year old or eight.
It can, and it usually does when URLs change without redirects or when content that was ranking gets deleted. Done carefully, with the old addresses redirected and the earning pages preserved, rankings hold and often improve because the new site is faster and better structured.
A refresh keeps the structure, the URLs, and usually the platform, and changes how it looks. A rebuild changes the structure too. A refresh is cheaper and lower risk, and it is enough whenever the underlying organization of the site is still right.
Probably, yes. A site that produces business is doing its job. Spend the money on the things that produce more of it, and revisit the design when it starts getting in the way rather than when it starts feeling dated to you.
It depends on page count, how much content has to be written, and whether anything has to integrate with other systems. We have a fixed-price $500 option for straightforward small business sites, and everything larger is quoted. The cost page on this site explains what actually drives the number.
Yes, including when the answer is no. Telling someone to spend a few hundred dollars on fixes instead of a few thousand on a rebuild is how I would rather be remembered, and it is usually the right call.
Leave it alone, fix specific things, refresh the design, or rebuild. You get my honest read and the reasoning behind it, including when nothing needs doing.
