Last updated
What is the difference between a website redesign and a rebuild?
A redesign changes how a site looks while keeping its structure and underlying platform. A rebuild changes the structure, the content, and usually the platform, and treats the appearance as an outcome rather than the goal. Sites that fail to generate enquiries almost always need the second one.
How to tell which one is needed
If visitors arrive, look around, and leave without calling, the problem is usually structural: the wrong pages exist, the phone number is buried, the service the business makes money on is three clicks down. Repainting that does nothing. If the site converts reasonably and simply looks dated next to competitors, a redesign is the right, cheaper answer.
The trap in a pure redesign
Keeping the existing structure means keeping the decisions that produced the current results. Plenty of businesses have paid for two redesigns of the same broken architecture and concluded that websites do not work for their industry.
What a rebuild has to protect
Everything the old site earned. Redirects from every old URL, the pages that already rank left intact or improved rather than merged away, and analytics carried across so before and after can be compared honestly. A rebuild that discards those is starting from zero while calling it progress.
Start with the free audit.
Get a free auditSend the link. We read the site by hand and write back inside five business days.
No call, no commitment