Does your website need a redesign?

Try one customer’s journey on your phone

Choose something a real visitor might want to do: understand a service, see your work or ask about a project. Open the page they would land on, rather than always starting at the homepage.

Follow the route through to the contact step. Ask someone who doesn’t know the site to try it too. Watch where they hesitate instead of explaining where to click.

• Can they tell what you do? Your main message should explain the business in ordinary words, with enough detail to know whether it fits their need.
• Can they find the next step? Service information, relevant examples and contact details should be easy to reach.
• Does it work on a phone? Look for text that needs zooming, buttons that are awkward to tap, sideways scrolling and important information hidden behind decoration.
• Does contact actually work? Check links and any forms your own site uses. If you send a test enquiry, confirm that it reaches the right person.

A successful test shows that the route works. It doesn’t prove that the website brings in enough enquiries; that needs separate evidence.

A repair or a redesign?

Improve what’s already there

If the information is useful and the structure works, a clearer heading, a repaired contact link or a simpler mobile layout may be enough.

Rework the structure

If visitors repeatedly have to hunt through unrelated pages, or the business has changed and the site no longer explains it, rethink the pages and the paths between them.

Consider rebuilding

If your existing setup makes essential changes difficult, compare repairing it with rebuilding it. Include the work of moving content, keeping useful links working and managing the site afterwards.

Illustrative example — not a client result.

Imagine a trades business with useful job photos and clear service pages, but a contact button that is hard to find on mobile. That points to a focused fix. If services, photos and contact details are scattered across several disconnected places, a broader change may be worth considering.

Write a useful brief before asking for a quote

Keep a short note with these five things. It gives you something concrete to discuss and later check.

• The visitor: who is the site for, and what are they trying to find out?
• The problem: which page or step is getting in their way? Include the URL and what happened.
• The action: what should someone be able to do next?
• The material: what copy, photos and examples do you have permission to use?
• The check: how will you confirm that the changed journey works, including on mobile?

Explain what needs to improve before choosing a platform or asking for a particular visual style. A design reference can help describe your taste, but it won’t explain the job the website needs to do.

Keep the useful parts when you change the site

List the existing pages and useful content before removing anything. Where available, use Search Console to see which pages receive search impressions and clicks. Keep useful URLs where practical. If a URL must change, plan a permanent redirect to the matching new page and check the old link afterwards.

Check the new navigation, language versions and contact route before launch. Search visibility can fluctuate while search engines process a significant change; a redesign is not a ranking guarantee. Google explains the URL and redirect planning in its site-move guidance.

See a website change in practice

For Primrose, property search had lived on a separate site and important information was difficult to find on mobile. The rebuild brought search, listings and ways to request a valuation together on the main domain. Read the Primrose story for the problem and the change.

If the website works but handling the enquiries creates repeated admin, that’s a different question. Use the first-automation guide to look at what happens after contact.