How often should you redesign your website?

The key points

• Age alone is not a reason; the site's condition and fit are.
• Unmaintainable technology and broken mobile are strong reasons.
• A changed brand or offer that the site no longer reflects is another.
• Poor conversion on a sound site is usually a fix, not a redesign.

What are good reasons to redesign?

Three situations justify a redesign. The technology is unmaintainable, the slow decay described in why websites break over time: updates are no longer available, small changes break other things, or nobody can safely work on it. The brand or offer has genuinely moved on, so the site describes a business you no longer are. Or mobile performance is broken in ways that cannot be patched, which matters when most visitors arrive on a phone.

What are weak reasons to redesign?

Boredom, a competitor's new look, or a feeling that the site is old. None of these says anything about whether the site works. A redesign is also the riskiest thing you can do to search visibility, so it should solve a problem that a smaller change cannot.

If the site loads quickly and is structurally sound but does not produce enquiries, look at the offer, the pages visitors leave, the form and the calls to action first. That is conversion work, and it is quicker to measure and to undo.

How do you decide between refreshing and redesigning?

Start with evidence rather than opinion: how fast the pages load, how the site behaves on a mid-range phone, where visitors stop, and which pages bring enquiries. If the problems are concentrated in a few pages or a few elements, fix those rather than rebuilding. If they are structural and affect everything, a website redesign is justified.