Website redesign guide /
When it is worth doing, and how not to lose what the old site earned.
We look at which of your pages bring visitors and what a rebuild would put at risk, and send you what to protect first.
By Reece Rainer
spareday, Newcastle NSW
Last updated
31 August 2026
Read time
6 minutes
A redesign is rebuilding a website that already exists. It is a different job to building the first one, because there is something to lose.
What follows is how to tell whether a redesign is the right answer, what has to be carried across so the new site keeps what the old one earned, and where Newcastle businesses lose traffic in the changeover.
When the site is genuinely holding the business back: slow on a phone, hard to change, missing pages for half of what you sell, or not asking for anything. Looking dated on its own is a weaker reason than it feels.
Owners usually arrive at this because the site looks old. That is a real feeling and it is rarely the expensive problem. The reasons worth spending on are the ones you can measure.
If none of those are true and the site simply looks dated, a tidy up of the type, the spacing and the photographs is a much smaller job that solves it.
An existing site has page addresses Google knows and positions it has earned. A redesign that changes those addresses without pointing the old ones at the new ones loses both.
This is the part that separates a redesign from a build and it is the part that goes wrong. Every page on your current site has an address, and some of those addresses are why people find you.
When the new site uses different addresses and the old ones return an error, the visitors following them arrive nowhere and the positions those pages held go with them. It is quiet, it happens over weeks, and by the time somebody notices the cause is months old.
The fix is unremarkable: every old address gets pointed at the page that replaced it, permanently. Google explains what it expects in its guidance on site moves, and the part that matters is that it is done before launch, not after.
The addresses, the pages that already bring visitors, the words that are working, and anything a customer might have bookmarked. Start from a list of those rather than from a blank page.
The instinct is to start again. The better start is a list of what the current site is already doing, because some of it is earning and nobody has looked.
This list is a morning of work and it is the difference between a redesign that keeps its position and one that starts again from nothing.
Missed redirects, pages quietly dropped, a form that stopped working, and the new site launching still closed to search engines. All four are avoidable and all four are common.
These are the ones we find when a business asks why enquiries fell off after a new site went live.
Each one of these takes minutes to check and weeks to notice. Checking is the whole answer.
List what exists, decide what is really wrong, build alongside the live site, map every old address to a new one, launch on a quiet morning, then check for a fortnight.
Every address, the pages that bring visitors, the searches you rank for, and anything customers use. A morning.
Speed, missing pages, nothing to do at the end of a page, hard to change. Written down, because it decides what the new site has to fix.
On a private address closed to search engines, so half a website never gets indexed while it is being made.
One line per page. This is the document that protects everything the old site earned, and it is done before launch.
Not a Friday afternoon. Old site kept reachable until you are certain.
Errors, forms arriving, and the pages that used to bring visitors still bringing them. This is when a missed redirect shows itself.
The listing and the redirect map are the careful parts. The building is the same as any site, and the content is what stretches it, as always.
Positions wobble for a few weeks after any redesign, even one done properly. The difference is that they come back.
Ask what happens to your existing page addresses, which pages currently earn, who owns the new site, and what a change costs afterwards. The first question is the one that protects the money.
We do this work in Newcastle, so we are not neutral. These are the questions we would want asked of us.
A tidy up is often the honest answer instead of a redesign, and it is a much smaller piece of work. Worth asking for it by name.
If you do one thing before redesigning anything, write down every page address on your current site. That one list is what stops a new website quietly costing you the visitors the old one had earned.
Related reading from us: the site itself and landing page design.
It can, and the cause is nearly always old page addresses that were not pointed at their replacements. Done with a redirect map, positions wobble for a few weeks and come back.
If the site is slow, missing pages for half of what you sell, or hard to change, that is a redesign. If it just looks dated, a tidy up is a much smaller job.
Every page address, the pages that bring visitors, the words on the pages that already rank, and anything customers have bookmarked.
The listing and the redirect map are quick. The content is what stretches it, the same as on any build.
Launching without a redirect map, and launching with the site still closed to search engines. Both take minutes to check and weeks to notice.
One monthly fee that covers everything, month to month, with no lock-in contract. The number depends on what your business needs, so we give it to you on the call.
He was able to take our rough ideas, from concept through to reality. The site has provided an influx of new members, helping to keep our club viable.
He created a stunning website for us that captures and nurtures leads with an automated email marketing system, which has filled a huge gap in the business and saved a lot of time (and money!).
Excellent in all facets of web design with particular expertise in SEO and email marketing. Online visibility has skyrocketed since working Reece which translates as flawless customer relations, new leads and new customers.