Redesigning without throwing away what was working
A redesign rebuilds how a site looks and works. The risk is that it discards things that were performing, because nobody established what they were first. A redesign that begins with data protects the pages earning traffic and enquiries; one that begins with a mood board frequently does not.
Redesigns are usually commissioned on an aesthetic judgement, the site looks dated, and the aesthetic judgement is often correct. The problem is that appearance is the only criterion anyone brings, so decisions get made about content and structure that nobody has examined, and the parts that were quietly working get redrawn along with the parts that were not.
The classic outcome is a better-looking site with worse results. Long pages that ranked are trimmed because the new layout favours brevity, and they lose the substance they ranked for. A cluttered form that converted at eight per cent is simplified into one that converts at four, because nobody measured the old one. Navigation is restructured on internal logic rather than on how visitors actually moved. And nobody recorded a baseline, so the decline becomes a matter of opinion.
When this work makes sense
Questions worth asking any supplier
Has anyone identified which pages currently earn traffic and enquiries? Those constrain the redesign.
Is there a baseline? Without one, you cannot tell afterwards whether the redesign helped.
Are URLs changing? If so, the redirect plan is part of the project, not an afterthought.
Is the redesign solving a stated problem, or is it that the site looks old? Both are valid, but they lead to different scopes.
Will the new site be editable by your team, or does every change return to a developer?
Deliverables
Performance analysis identifying which pages earn traffic, rankings and conversions
A preservation list, content and elements that must survive the redesign
Baseline recorded before launch: traffic, rankings, conversion rates
New design applied to the agreed structure rather than to invented pages
Content migrated in full, with trims made against data rather than layout
URL preservation, or a mapped redirect plan where structure must change
Post-launch comparison against the baseline
Built with
Process
A redesign here starts with a preservation list before any design work. We identify the pages earning traffic and enquiries, the elements that convert, and the content carrying rankings, and those become constraints the design must accommodate rather than things discovered missing after launch. It is a deliberately unglamorous first step and it is the difference between a redesign that improves results and one that merely improves appearance.
The standard nine stages, discovery, strategy, UX/UI, development, content and SEO, testing, launch, measurement and continuous improvement, apply to every project. The paragraph above is what differs for this one.
What moves the number
Pricing depends on scope, functionality, integrations and content requirements. These are the factors that change it most:
Reskin, redesign, or rebuild
Reskin
Fits: Sites whose structure works and whose appearance is dated
Limits: Only possible where content is genuinely separate from templates
Redesign
Fits: Sites needing new structure and appearance on the same platform
Limits: Structure changes mean URL and redirect work
Full rebuild
Fits: Sites on platforms that are unmaintainable or cannot deliver what is needed
Limits: Largest scope and risk; combines redesign with migration
Case studies
No published redesign case study. Before and after screenshots demonstrate taste rather than results, and results are the claim worth making.
MBGDesk operates from 4 offices in India, United States, United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates. We hold no industry certifications and do not imply otherwise.
Frequently asked questions
Will a redesign improve our conversions?
Only if it changes something that was limiting them, which requires knowing what that is. A redesign undertaken purely on appearance is as likely to reduce conversions as improve them, and without a baseline nobody will be able to say which happened.
Can we keep our existing content?
You should keep what performs. The instinct during a redesign is to cut, because shorter content fits a new layout more neatly. Pages rank for what is on them, so those cuts need to be made against data rather than against the design.
How do we avoid losing rankings?
Preserve URLs where possible, map and redirect them where not, and record a baseline before launch. Most redesign traffic losses trace to URL changes without redirects, which is entirely preventable.
How long does a redesign take?
It depends on template count and how much content is being rewritten. Fewer templates and migrated content move quickly; new content for every page is usually the longest pole, and it is usually underestimated.
Should we redesign or rebuild?
If the platform works and your team can edit the site, redesign. If content is locked inside templates, if editing requires a developer, or if the platform cannot do what you now need, redesign and rebuild become the same project.
Our last redesign lost us traffic. What went wrong?
Most commonly URLs changed without redirects, or content was trimmed. Both are diagnosable after the fact, we crawl what the old site had and compare against what now exists, and both are recoverable, though less completely than if they had been prevented.
How do we get internal agreement on a redesign?
By deciding who signs off before the work starts, and by arguing about structure before appearance. Wireframes are much easier to disagree with productively than finished designs, because nobody is defending a colour choice. Redesigns that overrun almost always have an unclear decision-maker, and that is a problem to solve in week one rather than in round four of revisions.
Services that connect to this
Talk to us about this
Tell us what you are trying to build and we will come back with scope, approach and an estimate.