Recognising the need for updates, from an agency that has seen what happens on both sides of the decision
Very few business owners wake up thinking, “Today’s the day I redesign my website.” The site works. Orders go through, the contact form sends its emails, and nobody has complained. So why fix what isn’t broken?
Because a website that works and a website that works well for you are two very different things. At Say Web Design we’ve rebuilt sites for businesses across Cornwall and London, and the most common thing we hear at the start isn’t “our site is broken.” It’s “we just had a feeling it could be better.” That feeling is usually right.
Here’s how to tell when it’s time, what to look for, and how to get through a redesign without it taking over your life.
I say this a lot, and I’ll keep saying it: your homepage is your shop window. If it looks like you haven’t spent time on it, or it isn’t up to a certain standard, visitors will assume your products and services aren’t either. That’s not fair, but it’s how people decide in the few seconds they give you.
We saw this clearly with an e-commerce client. Their site worked fine: products loaded, the basket worked, checkout went through. But the homepage was very basic. They were spending money on Google Ads to bring people to the site, and the bounce rate was high. People were arriving, taking one look and leaving. In effect they were paying for visitors who walked straight past the shop window.
We started by redesigning just the homepage. Once it was live, something interesting happened: the client could suddenly see how dated the rest of the site looked next to it. One strong page made everything else look tired, and they came back to us for the full redesign.
That pattern comes up again and again. We’ll refresh a homepage or build a single landing page, and a few weeks later the client says, “This is great. I think we need the rest done now.”
It happens with our own clients too. When I get back in touch with someone whose site we built four or five years ago, the first answer is often, “Oh no, it’s absolutely fine.” Then I show them some of our recent work and the reaction changes: “Oh. Yeah, I can see how much things have moved on.” Technology and design practice move quickly. Your site might still function perfectly well and still not show off your business the way it could.
When I look at a business’s website for the first time, these are the things that jump out at me:
The bolted-on site. This is very common with businesses that have grown quickly. They started with a template, or with a site built for one purpose, then added a page here, a new service there, a booking system somewhere else. Each addition made sense at the time, but together it doesn’t feel cohesive. Visitors can sense when a site has been stitched together, even if they couldn’t tell you why.
“Responsive” that isn’t really mobile-friendly. Plenty of sites technically respond to a smaller screen: everything shrinks and stacks. That isn’t the same as working properly on a phone. Buttons end up in awkward places, menus are fiddly, and key information gets buried halfway down the page. For most businesses, mobile is where the majority of visitors arrive, so this matters.
Slow mobile speed. A site that loads quickly on your office broadband can crawl on 4G in a car park, and people don’t wait.
The invisible details. Page titles, meta descriptions, Open Graph images (the preview picture that appears when someone shares your link on social media). Most owners never look at these, but search engines and social platforms do. When they’re missing or generic, your site makes a weaker first impression before anyone has even clicked.
Paying for traffic that doesn’t stay. If you’re spending on ads or SEO and your bounce rate is high, the problem may not be the traffic. It may be what people land on.
None of these things on its own makes a site “bad.” It’s the small details together that make up a really good website, and the gaps add up just as quickly.
Here’s something you might not expect a web designer to say: you don’t always need a full redesign.
We’ve had clients see a landing page we built and ask us to redo their whole site. I’ve looked at what they had and said, “Actually, a refresh on a few of your pages will do the job. You don’t need to start again.” A good agency should look at your business as a whole, work out what’s doing its job and what isn’t, and tell you straight.
That said, there are times when a full redesign is the easier and better option. If the list of changes keeps growing, patching becomes more work than starting fresh. And sometimes the most valuable thing you can do is take everything out of the box and only put back what you actually need.
Most websites build up bloat over the years. Pages for products that were best-sellers three years ago and barely sell now. Services that have been quietly retired. Content written for a business you’ve since outgrown. A redesign is a chance to look at your site with fresh eyes and make it reflect where the business is now, not where it was.
If you’ve ever wondered why some companies take forever to redesign their site, this is usually why. A redesign touches every part of a business. In larger companies, different people run different services, and they all have opinions about how their area should be presented. Getting everyone to agree is often harder than the design itself.
We learned this the hard way. We worked on a project closely with one contact who loved everything we produced. Then, right at launch, the CEO came back with a long list of changes. Some we were able to talk through, some were cosmetic and we made them, and some were new work that we quoted for. It worked out, but nobody wants to reach the end of a project and find there’s still a mountain to climb.
So now, in every kickoff meeting, I ask two questions:
The smoothest projects we’ve run are the ones where the point person has already spoken to every department before we start. They’ve collected everyone’s requirements, set dates for when copy needs to be in and when designs need signing off, and kept everyone in the loop. It’s really just good communication. Nobody wants to be brought in at the eleventh hour and feel they didn’t get their say.
The biggest reason businesses put off a redesign is the time they think it will take. The good news is that how much you put in is largely up to you.
Our clients tend to fall into two camps. Some come to us with a detailed brief: someone internally has gathered every requirement and knows exactly what they want. Others come to us and say, “We know we need a new website, but we’re not the experts. Can you come up with some ideas?”
Both work. For the second group we can handle the heavy lifting: design, content, testing and launch, so the client has very little to do beyond giving feedback and approving things. What we do need from everyone is good input at the start. Who are your competitors? Which websites do you like, and why? What’s changed in your business? With that, we can get going quickly instead of guessing.
If you can say yes to two or more of these, it’s worth a conversation:
Your website is your shop window, and it’s often the first impression a customer has of your business. It doesn’t need to be broken to be holding you back.
The right agency won’t push you into a full redesign you don’t need. They’ll look at what’s working, fix what isn’t, and be honest about which route makes more sense. And if time is what’s stopping you, it doesn’t have to be.
Wondering whether your site needs a refresh or a full redesign? Get in touch with Say Web Design and we’ll take an honest look.
