10 signs your website needs a redesign (and 3 that it doesn’t)

Every web designer will tell you that your website needs a redesign. That is how they earn a living. So this post tries to be more useful than that: ten signs that your business website genuinely does need replacing, three signs that it does not and you should keep your money, and a plain answer on what a redesign costs and how to do it without losing the Google rankings you already have.

1. It looks dated next to your competitors

Open your site and two competitors’ sites side by side on your phone. Be honest. If yours looks like it was built in a different decade, customers notice, and they draw a conclusion about your business from it, fair or not.

Dated usually means small text, a cluttered home page, stock photos of handshakes, and a layout designed for a desktop monitor and squashed onto everything else. None of these is fatal on its own. Together they cost you enquiries you never knew about.

2. It is hard to use on a phone

For most local businesses, well over half of visitors arrive on a phone. If they have to pinch and zoom to read your prices, if the menu does not work, or if the phone number is not tappable, the site is failing at the one thing it most needs to do.

A quick test: find your opening hours, your phone number and your contact form on your own site using only your thumb. If any of those takes more than two taps, or needs zooming, that is a sign.

3. It is slow

Slow sites lose visitors before the page has even appeared, and Google measures speed as part of how it ranks you. The yardstick is Google’s Core Web Vitals: your largest content should load within 2.5 seconds, the page should respond to taps within 200 milliseconds, and nothing should jump around as it loads.

Run your home page through Google’s PageSpeed Insights. If the mobile score is in the red and the fixes listed are things like “reduce unused JavaScript” and “eliminate render-blocking resources”, the problem is usually the way the site was built rather than one image you can shrink. Our post on website speed and Core Web Vitals explains what each measure means and which ones you can fix yourself.

4. Enquiries have dried up, or come from the wrong people

This is the sign that actually matters. A website exists to bring you work. If it used to and now does not, something has changed: your rankings, your competitors, or what your visitors expect.

Wrong enquiries count too. If you are a commercial landscaper and every form submission is someone wanting their front lawn mowed, the site is not explaining what you do, or who you do it for, clearly enough. That is a content and design problem, and it is fixable.

5. You cannot update it yourself, or nobody knows how

A site you cannot change is a site that slowly goes stale. Old prices, a service you no longer offer, a team photo with two people who left last year. If updating a sentence means emailing a developer who may or may not reply, or logging into a system nobody in the business understands, the site is holding you back.

This does not always need a redesign. Sometimes it needs a half-day of training or a simpler editing setup. But if the site was built in a way that makes small edits risky, replacing it is often cheaper than patching it.

6. It runs on an old platform or unsupported plugins

Websites have an engine underneath, whether that is WordPress, an old page builder, or a version of PHP your host will soon stop supporting. If your dashboard shows a wall of updates you are afraid to click, or plugins their authors abandoned years ago, you are carrying a risk you cannot see.

Unsupported software is the most common way small-business sites get hacked. It is also the most common reason a site suddenly breaks after a routine hosting update. If you are weighing up platforms, our comparison of WordPress and a custom-built website covers which suits which kind of business.

7. No HTTPS, or browsers show security warnings

Look at the address bar. If your site shows “Not secure”, a crossed-out padlock, or a full-page warning, visitors are being told not to trust you. Many will not fill in a form on a site that is flagged that way, and quite rightly.

An SSL certificate on its own is a hosting fix, not a redesign. But in our experience a site that still has no HTTPS has usually been neglected in other ways too. Any decent hosting, including our managed hosting, includes SSL as standard.

8. The content no longer matches the business

Businesses move. You added a service, dropped another, moved premises, started working with commercial clients instead of domestic ones, or simply got better at what you do. If the website still describes the business as it was when the site was built, it is actively misleading people.

Read your home page as a stranger would. Does it say what you do, where you do it, and why someone should choose you, in the first screen? If the answer to any of those is out of date, the design probably needs to change with it, because a layout built around one message rarely carries a different one well.

9. Google Search Console shows errors or falling impressions

Google Search Console is free, and if you do not have it set up for your site, do that this week. It tells you which searches your site appears for, how often, and what is going wrong.

Two things to look for. First, errors: pages Google cannot index, mobile usability problems, or Core Web Vitals marked “poor”. Second, the trend line on impressions. A steady decline over six months, when your business has not changed, usually means competitors have overtaken you with better sites and better content. A redesign that keeps your existing URLs and improves the content is the normal fix.

10. You are embarrassed to put it on a van or a business card

This one is not technical, but it is real. If you find yourself saying “ignore the website, just give us a call”, or you have quietly stopped printing the address on anything, your gut has already decided.

Three signs your website does not need a redesign

Now the other side, because a surprising number of sites that look tired are doing their job perfectly well.

It works and converts, but looks slightly dated

If the phone rings, the form gets filled in, and the people enquiring are the right kind of customer, a slightly old-fashioned look is not a problem worth £1,000 to solve. A few targeted changes (a new logo, better photography, a tidier home page) may be all it needs. Do not let a designer talk you out of a site that is earning its keep.

You just need new photos or new copy

Poor photos and vague wording make a good design look bad. If the structure of the site is sound and the pages load quickly on a phone, spend the money on a half-day with a photographer and someone who can write clearly. Both will do more for enquiries than a new template.

One page is the problem

Sometimes it is just the services page that is confusing, or the contact page that nobody completes. Fix that page. A redesign of the whole site to solve one page is like moving house because the kitchen tap drips.

Redesign or rebuild?

People use the two words loosely, but they are different jobs with different prices.

In practice, if two or more of signs 3, 5, 6 and 7 apply (slow by design, hard to update, unsupported platform, no security), a rebuild is usually better value than trying to redesign on top of a shaky base. If the platform is fine and the problem is signs 1, 2, 4 and 8, a redesign on the same platform is the sensible route.

Either way, the site should go live through a proper launch checklist, and before you start, make sure you actually own the domain and the site you are about to replace.

What a redesign costs with WebProud

Our web design service prices a redesign the same way as a new site: fixed prices, no hourly surprises. For most small businesses that is £500 for a Starter site of up to 5 pages, hand-built and fast, or £999 for a Standard site of up to 12 pages with a bespoke design system, on-page SEO and schema. Fully custom sites with online shops, bookings or integrations start from £2,500. The full breakdown is on our pricing page, and our guide to what a website costs in the UK explains what should be included at each price.

Two things are always part of the price. First, we keep your existing page addresses wherever we can, and where a page has to move we set up permanent redirects from every old URL to its new home, so the rankings you have built up carry across. Second, you own the result: the domain, the code and the content are yours.

Your self-check list

Go through this with your own site open on your phone. Tick each one that applies.

• It looks noticeably older than two competitors’ sites.
• I cannot find the phone number, hours and contact form within two taps on my phone.
• PageSpeed Insights gives the mobile home page a red score.
• Enquiries have fallen, or they are mostly from the wrong kind of customer.
• Updating a price or a photo means asking someone else, and waiting.
• The platform or plugins are out of date and I am nervous about updating them.
• The address bar shows “Not secure” or a warning.
• The home page describes the business as it was, not as it is.
• Search Console shows errors, or impressions have been falling for months.
• I would rather not put the address on the van.

Zero to two ticks: keep the site, fix the specific thing. Three to five: a redesign is worth a conversation. Six or more: it is time, and the sooner you do it the less it is costing you.

If you would like an honest second opinion, get in touch. We reply to every enquiry within one working day, the 20-minute scoping call is free, and if the answer is “keep what you have”, that is what we will tell you.