What is a website redesign?
A website redesign involves reviewing and significantly updating the structure, layout, branding, content and overall user experience (UX) of your website. This involves a complete overhaul of its code and its visuals. The most common reason is to improve the experience for your target users, generate more organic traffic and boost revenue as a result.
This is different from a website refresh, which may make small scale changes but will keep the existing code and functionality intact. For example, a refresh might involve changing the logos and branding alone. Or updating content to make it more relevant and improve SEO.
A refresh can make sense if you are still working with your website’s original developer and just want to make some low-risk incremental changes. But in most cases, the person who coded your original site is long gone. If that is the case, then beware of the temptation to try and eke out a refresh on the cheap.
It’s not as easy as you’d think for new developers to try and re-skin or optimise your existing build. They need to contend with legacy code with no clue as to its robustness. So if they break something by accident, it can cost more to fix than if you had opted for the full redesign.