8 signs your website needs a redesign, and how to check each one
Short answer: your website needs a redesign if it is slow on a phone, hard to read without zooming, hides the way to contact you, never mentions the towns you serve, or cannot be changed without paying someone each time. Any one of those costs you enquiries every week. The good news is that a redesign does not mean starting from zero. Done properly, it keeps the pages and rankings that work and fixes the rest. Below are the 8 signs, with a way to check each one yourself in about 10 minutes.
The 8 signs at a glance
| Sign | How to check it | What it costs you |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Slow on a phone | Open it on 4G, not Wi-Fi, and count | Visitors leave before it loads |
| 2. Hard to read on mobile | Try to read a page without zooming | Visitors give up on the text |
| 3. Contact is hidden | Look for the form or email on the first screen | Ready customers cannot reach you |
| 4. No towns named | Search the site text for your town names | You only rank for your business name |
| 5. Words say nothing | Read the home page heading out loud | Nobody knows what you do in 5 seconds |
| 6. You cannot change it | Try to update one price | Out-of-date prices and old offers stay up |
| 7. Out of date | Check the photos, prices and copyright year | The business looks closed or careless |
| 8. You do not own it | Find who the domain is registered to | You can lose the site and the address |
1. It is slow on a phone
Turn off Wi-Fi, open your site on mobile data and count how long it takes until you can read the main heading. If you find yourself waiting, so do your customers, and plenty of them will press back and pick the next result. The usual causes are huge photos, sliders, old plugins and cheap shared hosting. We explain what Google measures in why a slow website costs you customers.
2. It is hard to read on a mobile
If you need to pinch and zoom, the site was designed for a desktop screen and squeezed onto a phone afterwards. Look for tiny text, buttons too close together to tap, and tables that run off the side of the screen. Most local searches happen on a phone, so this is the version of your site most customers see.
3. The way to contact you is hidden
Open the home page. Without scrolling, can you see a button, a form or an email address? If the only route is a “contact us” link in the menu, you are making a ready customer hunt. Then send yourself a test message through the form and check it arrives. Broken forms are more common than people think, and they fail silently.
4. It never names the towns you serve
Use your browser’s “find on page” on each page and type your main towns. If Chester, Northwich or Warrington appear only in the footer address, Google has very little reason to show you for “your trade plus that town”. A redesign is the right moment to add an areas page and real pages for the towns you want work from.
5. The words say nothing
Read your home page heading out loud. “Welcome to our website” and “Quality you can trust” tell a visitor nothing. A good heading says what you do and where, such as “Kitchen fitters in Macclesfield”. Then look at the rest of the page. If every paragraph could belong to any business in any town, it will rank like it.
6. You cannot change anything yourself
Try to change one price. If the answer is a login nobody remembers, a page builder that breaks when you touch it, or an email to a designer who charges by the hour, the site will drift out of date. That is not your fault. It is a sign the site was built without thinking about the year after launch.
7. It looks out of date
Old photos of staff who have left, a price list from 3 years ago, a copyright year that has not moved, a news page whose last post is from before the pandemic. Customers notice all of these and quietly wonder whether you are still trading. Compare it with the 3 competitors who rank above you. If theirs look more current, the customer will think the same about the businesses.
8. You do not own it
Look up who the domain is registered to, and ask your current provider whether you can have a copy of the site files. If the domain is in someone else’s name, or the site lives on a platform that cannot be exported, you are renting. That matters most at redesign time, because it decides whether you keep your address and your rankings. We cover the ownership trap in pay monthly websites: the real cost.
Redesign or refresh?
Not every tired site needs rebuilding. Here is the honest split.
| Situation | What we would suggest |
|---|---|
| Fast, owned, readable on a phone, just dated | A refresh: new photos, new copy, a new areas page |
| Slow or awkward on a phone | A redesign. Speed and mobile layout are built in, not bolted on |
| Built on a rented platform you cannot export | A redesign on a site you own, keeping the domain |
| Ranks well but converts badly | Keep the addresses, rewrite the pages, fix the contact route |
| Under 2 years old and working | Leave it alone and add pages instead |
How to keep your rankings in a redesign
The fear with any redesign is losing the Google positions you already have. That happens when old addresses disappear. The safe way is simple: list every page that ranks or gets visits, keep those addresses where you can, and redirect any that change to the matching new page. Keep the copy that works and improve it, rather than throwing it away. Then submit the new sitemap to Google and watch the rankings for a month.
That is the process we follow on every website redesign. For up to 5 pages it is the same £399 as a new build, with extra pages at £60 each, and the full breakdown is on our pricing page.
Questions to ask yourself
- When did a customer last tell me they found us through the website?
- Would I be happy to send this site to my best customer today?
- Can I change a price or a photo this afternoon without help?
- Do I know who owns my domain?
- If a competitor launched a better site next month, what would I lose?
If 2 or more answers made you wince, it is time. Send us your current web address and we will reply by email within one working hour with what we would keep, what we would change and a fixed price.