When a website starts to feel old, the instinct is to give it a refresh: new fonts, new photos, maybe a new homepage. Sometimes that's exactly right. But often the problems run deeper, and a refresh just makes a broken site look newer.
Here are the five signs we look for that a site needs a proper redesign.
1. Nobody wants to edit it
If updating a page means emailing a developer, or if the one person who knows the CMS is on leave, your site has stopped being a tool and become a liability. A redesign rebuilds the content structure so anyone on the team can make changes safely.
2. It's slow on a phone
Test it yourself on mobile data. If the homepage takes more than three seconds to become usable, you're losing visitors before they read a word. Speed is usually an architecture problem — heavy themes, unoptimised images, too many plugins — and a refresh rarely touches it.
3. Visitors can't find the important things
Look at your analytics. If people land, scroll and leave, or if your most-visited page is the contact page because they gave up looking, the problem is structure, not style.
4. The business has changed
You've added services, dropped others, moved upmarket or changed who you sell to. A site built for the business you were three years ago will keep attracting that business.
5. Things are quietly broken
Forms that don't send. Pages that 404. Layouts that collapse on certain phones. These are signs the foundation has drifted, and each fix on top makes the next one harder.
What a redesign doesn't mean
A redesign doesn't mean starting over. We keep the brand, the content that works and every URL that search engines know about. What changes is everything underneath: structure, templates, speed and the editing experience.
If you recognise two or more of these signs, it's probably worth an audit. If you recognise one, a refresh might be all you need — and we'll tell you so.