Five questions to ask before you redesign your website

A website redesign is one of those projects that can absorb enormous amounts of time, money and energy without producing a meaningfully different outcome — if it starts from the wrong place.

Most redesigns begin with a visual brief: something cleaner, more modern, more “us.” Sometimes that’s the right place to start. Often it isn’t. The problem isn’t always the design; and if it isn’t, redesigning won’t fix it.

Before you start briefing designers or building a mood board, these are the five questions worth sitting with first.

1. Do I actually know why the current site isn’t working?

This sounds obvious, but most website briefs skip it. “It looks dated” and “I’m just not happy with it” are feelings, not diagnoses. Before changing anything, try to get specific.

Is the problem that people aren’t finding the site? That’s a traffic and discovery problem. Is it that people land on it and don’t enquire? That’s a conversion or clarity problem. Are the clients who do enquire the wrong fit? That’s a positioning problem. Or does it genuinely look unprofessional relative to where you want to be? That’s an aesthetic credibility problem.

Each of these has a different solution. Redesigning a site with a clarity problem won’t fix the clarity; it’ll give you a prettier site that still doesn’t convert. Knowing what you’re actually trying to solve is the most valuable thing you can bring to any design brief.

2. Has the copy been looked at, or just the design?

Design and copy are inseparable on a website, but they’re often treated as if they’re independent. Business owners invest in new design and keep the existing copy, or vice versa. The result is almost always a compromise.

If your current homepage copy is vague, jargon-heavy or written primarily for your peers rather than your clients, a new design won’t fix that. The visual container will be better; what’s inside it will still confuse people.

Before committing to a full redesign, read your existing copy out loud as if hearing it for the first time. Better yet, ask someone completely outside your industry to read it and explain back to you what you do. If they can’t, the copy needs work regardless of what happens to the design.

3. Who am I actually trying to reach — and has that changed?

Businesses evolve faster than websites do. The client you were pitching to when you built your current site may not be the client you’re pitching to now. If your ideal client has shifted — in industry, in budget, in the kind of work they need — your website may be accurately representing a business you’ve already moved on from.

This is particularly common for service providers who’ve raised their rates, niched down or shifted focus in the past year or two. Before redesigning, confirm exactly who the new site needs to speak to. Everything else — the copy, the design, the case studies you feature — follows from that answer.

4. What do I want people to do when they get there?

This should have one specific answer. Not “find out about my services” or “get in touch if they’re interested.” Something concrete: “book a discovery call using the button on the homepage” or “fill in the enquiry form on the contact page.”

A website with an unclear call to action is like a shop that makes it hard to find the till. The visitor might be interested; the path to acting on that interest is just unclear enough that they leave without doing it. One clear, repeated action on every page outperforms several scattered options every time.

5. Is a full redesign actually what’s needed?

Sometimes the answer is yes. But sometimes a meaningful improvement can be made by addressing specific elements rather than rebuilding from scratch.

Rewriting the above-the-fold section of your homepage — the headline, the subheadline and the call to action — can have a significant effect on conversion without touching anything else. Fixing inconsistent typography across the site, adding three strong testimonials to the services page or simplifying a navigation menu with too many options are all meaningful changes that don’t require a full rebuild.

If the brief is “we want it to feel a bit more us,” a targeted refresh may get you further, faster than starting over.

Write down honest answers to these five questions before you speak to a designer. If the answers are fuzzy, spend time on them first. A clear brief leads to a faster process, a better result and far less of the “this isn’t quite right but I’m not sure why” that makes website projects so draining.

If you’d like a professional view on what your current site is actually doing, a website audit is a useful starting point. Drop us a message via our contact form to get started.