Web redesign: What does it really mean and how to do it?

Change the logo, put on a more modern font, round off the buttons and replace the header photos. Unfortunately, that's how a lot of companies still imagine web redesign. The problem is that such a superficial approach (the so-called facelift) will not save your business and will not lead to higher demand. A real redesign is not about making a website look just „pretty“. It's about a deep intervention into the structure, technology and user journey with a single goal - to make the website work better and generate more profit.

Web redesign is a strategic process of rebuilding your digital branch based on real data and user feedback. It often involves changing the entire information architecture, rewriting texts from the perspective of UX writing and often a complete switch to a more modern technology platform (e.g. migration to Webflow or tailor-made solutions).

If the redesign is done correctly, your conversions will skyrocket. But if the technical preparation is underestimated, a new website can irrevocably destroy your years of organic traffic from search engines overnight. In this article we will show how to build a redesign on hard data and how to technically manage it without fatal impacts on SEO.

End of impressions: 9 questions for data-driven redesign

Before the designer draws the first line in Figma and before the first line of code is written, you need to create a clear brief. And it must not be based on the director's feelings, but on real visitor behaviour, which you can read for example from Google Analytics 4, Microsoft Clarity and Google Search Console. The results of this analysis will give you bulletproof answers to what a new website needs to meet.

1. Device: mobile vs. desktop

Question: Do visitors primarily come from mobile devices, or do they view projects and services on large monitors?

Impact on the new website: Determine the absolute priority for design. If the desktop dominates, you can work with large galleries, wide tables and fine detail. If mobile overwhelmingly wins in data, the navigation, portfolio view and filters themselves must be as economical as possible, ergonomic for the thumb and extremely fast to load. Nowadays, most websites have a higher proportion of visits from mobile than to desktop, but in practice we still see exceptions (especially in the B2B segment).

2. Geography and language mutations

Question: What countries and specific cities do people come from?

Impact on the new website: The data will confirm or deny priorities for language versions. You'll find out whether the English (or even German) version is actually being used, and then determine how much to emphasize it in the new structure and whether it's worth investing in professional translations of the entire blog or just key pages.

3. Project and category performance

Question: Which specific products, services are most frequently displayed?

Impact on the new website: Identify the „drivers“ of your website. Use the numbers to determine exactly which subpages you need to visually highlight right on the homepage and how to logically order the categories in the menu so that the user does not have to search for the most popular ones.

4. User path and navigation

Question: What does a typical web passage look like? Do people go directly from the homepage to the pricing/contact page, or are they interested in your history?

Impact on the new website: Design of the main menu and internal linking. If we know that 60 % people are looking for case studies after reading an article about the service, we need to put the link to the references immediately below the text to make their journey to the most important information as short as possible.

5. Loyalty and returning visitors

Question: Do people come back to the site repeatedly, or do they only come once, buy/leave and you don't see them again?

Impact on the new website: If people are proving to come back, you need to strengthen the news, blog or updates section in the design to give them a reason to consume the content. If one-off visits are overwhelmingly prevalent, the site needs to function primarily as a punchy, high-converting business card.

6. Landing Pages

Question: Do people mainly come to the homepage, or do they go straight to the depth of the site via search engines to see the details of specific projects or products?

Impact on the new website: This is a common trap. Designers tweak the homepage, but data often shows that 80 % people „land“ right on subpages. So these landing pages need to include strong navigation elements and clear Call to Action (CTA) buttons that keep the user on the site and lead them straight to the contact.

7. Search visibility and intent (this is where Google Search Console comes in)

Question: What specific queries do people search for you through? Is it your brand name, or is it more general topics and problem names you're addressing?

Impact on the new website: A fundamental basis for the textual content of the web (copywriting). We will find out what information people really expect, what „pains“ they are asking for, and we will focus on exactly these questions in the headlines and texts of the new website.

8. Sources of traffic

Question: Where do people come from most often? Is it direct leads, organic searches from Google, social networks (LinkedIn, Instagram), or professional industry portals?

Impact on the new website: We will find out what background your most active target group is from and adjust the overall tone of voice & tone and depth of technical information accordingly.

9. Site abandonment analysis

Question: On which sites do people most often close the site in frustration and leave to a competitor?

Impact on the new website: The most important step to increase conversion rate is to identify weak points. If we see that people are massively leaving in the middle of viewing a price list or at a contact form, we know for sure that the current form of presentation is not working and we need to build it from scratch differently when redesigning.

How not to kill SEO and lose traffic during redesign

When you launch a new website with a new design and a new structure, for a search engine (Google, Seznam) it is often as if you closed the old company and opened a completely new one at a different address. If you do it wrong, the search engine loses the old pages, it doesn't know the new ones yet, and your organic traffic drops to zero in a matter of days.

Here's the exact technology to protect organic traffic:

1. Old URL extraction and site map

Before you launch your new site, you need to get a complete list of all existing URLs of your old site. Don't leave out old blog articles or forgotten categories. That's what tools like Screaming Frog SEO Spider are for.

2. The holy grail of redesign: 301 redirection (Redirect mapping)

This is absolutely the most critical point in the whole process. If the old service was located at vasedomena.cz/services/web-creation and the new website will be at vasedomena.cz/webdesign, you have to tell the search engine where the content has moved to. This is done by a permanent redirect with the code 301. You create a table (URL Mapping) where you assign a new address to each old address. If the technician doesn't put this table on the server, all the power gained over the years on the old site is irretrievably gone, and people who click on the old links will only see a 404 error page. The same thing happens to crawlers. The result is then a dramatic drop in the visibility of the site in both traditional search and language models.

3. Protecting successful content and metadata

When rewriting texts, pay close attention to the pages that currently bring you the most traffic. If you rank for a complex technical query in the first place on the old site, the new clean design without that text will send you to the second page of results. Remember to also transfer your carefully tweaked Title Tags, Meta descriptions and the correct hierarchy of headings (H1, H2, H3).

4. Technical check before launch (Staging)

A new website is always prepared on a so-called test (staging) server, where search engines must not have access (blocking via password or file robots.txt) to avoid duplication of content. Before flipping to the sharp domain, the robot pass is simulated and checked to make sure all redirects are working and the correct measurement codes are deployed.

Important note: Prepare for SEO oscillation

Even if you follow absolutely every conceivable technical procedure, you have to take into account one hard fact: Search result positions can (and very likely will) fluctuate in the short term. Search bots have to crawl your entire new website, understand the changed code, map the new structure and re-evaluate all the signals. After a redesign is launched, there is usually a slight drop in traffic before the new system „settles in“. For this reason, don't panic if the numbers drop the first week. Relevant conclusions about the overall SEO impact of the redesign should be made and evaluated after 3 to 6 months of live operation at the earliest.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) about web redesign

Should I also change the CMS during the redesign?

Very often it makes sense. If your old site is running on an outdated or custom-written system that no one knows how to maintain, a redesign is the perfect opportunity to migrate to a modern platform like Webflow or a detuned WordPress. Moving to a modern CMS will give you the flexibility and freedom to edit text in the future. At the same time, however, you need to account for the increased complexity of setting up redirects to maintain organic positions.

Should I turn off the old site and put the „In progress“ message while creating a new site?

From an SEO and business perspective, this is the worst possible thing you can do. Leave the old site running in its original form until the last second before you replace it with a new site on the domain. The „downtime“ of the site should be minutes, ideally it should not occur at all for the user if the DNS servers are set up correctly.

How long does it take to redesign a website?

It can't be done in a week. Data analytics, wireframes design, user testing, UI design, programming, content filling and final technical testing will take at least 1 to 3 months in case of professional approach, even half a year for larger e-shops and portals.

Do I have to change the logo and visual identity with the new website?

Not necessarily. Web redesign and brand rebranding are two different disciplines. However, it often happens that the modernisation of the digital presentation naturally shows that the old logo is no longer technically suitable (e.g. it is difficult to read on mobile phones), and a so-called logo facelift is undertaken to match the new, clean structure of the website.

Do you feel that your website is outdated, not fulfilling the goals you expect from it, and are you considering a complete redesign? At Apadore, we don't redesign based on feelings, but on hard data and a precise technical process. We're happy to walk you through the analytics of your current site and show you where you're currently running out of money. Book a non-binding meeting and we'll discuss the next course of action together.

The most underrated part of a redesign is usually URL mapping. If the URL structure is changing, be sure to redirection Before launching the new website, don't forget to transfer the redirects from previous redesigns as well.

If the page URLs are also changing as part of the redesign, you'll also have to website migration. The mapping of old and new addresses is prepared before the launch, not after, based on what goes wrong.

Before you commission a redesign, review the offer from a contractual standpoint as well. Licenses granting the right to modify the work and access rights assigned to your company are matters that are difficult to negotiate retroactively. Read more in the article about this, What Should a Website Development Contract Include?.