Capabilities / Web & Digital / Website Redesign
A redesign that fixes the business problem.
Diagnose. Rebuild. Protect.
Most redesigns change how a site looks and leave the reason it was failing completely intact. We find the reason first, then rebuild around it, with your search rankings protected through the move.
A HAUS XXIV website redesign begins with diagnosis rather than design: an analytics review, a technical audit, and a search visibility baseline for every ranking URL. Every existing URL is mapped and tested before launch, and Search Console is monitored daily for thirty days after.
The second redesign costs more than the first one did.
It usually happens two years later, for the same stated reason as last time. The site looks dated. It is hard to update. Leads have dropped. So another agency gets hired, another six-figure project runs, and the site looks current again while doing exactly what the old one did.
01 / WHAT WE BUILD
Four stages. One rebuild.
Before anything gets designed we find out what the current site is actually doing. Analytics, heatmaps, search visibility, page speed, and recordings of real people trying to complete the thing you need them to complete.
WHAT SHIPS
- Analytics and behavior audit with drop-off points named
- Technical and Core Web Vitals audit
- Search visibility baseline for every ranking page
- Content inventory with keep, rewrite, or kill marked
- Sales and customer-facing team interviews
- Written problem statement we both agree on before design
Structure first, then surface. New information architecture, new user flows, then custom design built from your real content rather than placeholder text that hides how long your headlines actually are.
WHAT SHIPS
- New sitemap and information architecture
- User flows for every conversion path
- Custom design for every unique template
- Clickable prototype before any code is written
- Hand-coded responsive front end
- CMS rebuilt with editor-friendly fields and guardrails
This is where redesigns quietly destroy businesses. A site launches, URLs change, redirects were an afterthought, and four months of organic traffic evaporates while everyone is still congratulating each other on the launch.
WHAT SHIPS
- Complete 301 redirect map, tested before launch
- Metadata and heading structure migration
- Schema markup carried over and validated
- Content migration with formatting verified page by page
- Search Console monitoring for 30 days post-launch
- Ranking comparison report against the pre-launch baseline
Launch is where most agencies stop and most problems start. Real traffic behaves differently than a QA checklist predicted, and the first ninety days is when you find out which assumptions were wrong.
WHAT SHIPS
- Recorded CMS training plus written documentation
- 30-day ranking and traffic monitoring
- 90-day performance review against the original goals
- Conversion fixes from real post-launch behavior
- Optional retained support with response times in writing
02 / NO AMBIGUITY
What actually lands in your hands.
Before design
- Written diagnosis with the real problem named
- Search visibility baseline for every ranking URL
- Content inventory with keep, rewrite, or kill decisions
- New sitemap and user flows
- Performance and accessibility budget, agreed in writing
Design & build
- Clickable prototype at desktop and mobile
- Every unique template, fully designed
- Component library in Figma
- Hand-coded front end on staging from week one
- CMS with human-language field names and guardrails
Launch & after
- Tested 301 redirect map covering every old URL
- WCAG 2.2 AA audit report
- Core Web Vitals scores measured against the budget
- Recorded training and written documentation
- 30-day ranking monitoring and 90-day performance review
03 / HOW A REDESIGN RUNS
Five phases. Ten to sixteen weeks.
Staging access on day one. A written build note every week. You will never sit through a reveal meeting seeing the whole thing for the first time.
Analytics, behavior recordings, technical audit, search baseline, and interviews with the people who talk to your customers. We establish what is broken with evidence, so the redesign has a target instead of a mood.
New architecture, new flows, and content decisions made page by page. Most of the value in a redesign is created here, before anything is visually designed, and it is the phase clients are most often talked out of paying for.
Custom design against the approved structure, delivered as a clickable prototype rather than flat images. You experience how it moves and how it behaves on a phone before a line of code exists.
Front end hand-coded, CMS rebuilt, content migrated, redirects mapped and tested against the live site. Migration runs alongside the build rather than in a panic during launch week.
Real device testing, assistive technology testing, load testing, then launch. Search Console monitored daily for thirty days. Training delivered live and recorded. Then a full performance review at ninety days against the goals we set in phase one.
01 / 05
01
Diagnose
Analytics, behavior recordings, technical audit, search baseline, and interviews with the people who talk to your customers. We establish what is broken with evidence, so the redesign has a target instead of a mood.
Ends with: Written diagnosis and an agreed problem statement.
02
Restructure
New architecture, new flows, and content decisions made page by page. Most of the value in a redesign is created here, before anything is visually designed, and it is the phase clients are most often talked out of paying for.
Ends with: Approved sitemap, flows, wireframes, and content plan.
03
Design
Custom design against the approved structure, delivered as a clickable prototype rather than flat images. You experience how it moves and how it behaves on a phone before a line of code exists.
Ends with: Approved prototype at every breakpoint.
04
Build and migrate
Front end hand-coded, CMS rebuilt, content migrated, redirects mapped and tested against the live site. Migration runs alongside the build rather than in a panic during launch week.
Ends with: Complete site on staging with content and redirects verified.
05
Launch and watch
Real device testing, assistive technology testing, load testing, then launch. Search Console monitored daily for thirty days. Training delivered live and recorded. Then a full performance review at ninety days against the goals we set in phase one.
Ends with: QA log, accessibility audit, ranking comparison, recorded training, and a 90-day review.
04 / WHY THIS HAUS
Three reasons, and the code behind them.
PRINCIPLE 11
Old made dangerous
We do not throw out what is working.
If a page ranks, converts, or carries real equity, it survives the redesign with its structure protected. Heritage is fuel, not a cage. Agencies that rebuild everything from zero are usually doing it because starting over is faster for them, not better for you.
PRINCIPLE 05
Craft over clout
Performance is agreed before design starts.
Largest Contentful Paint under two seconds. Layout shift under 0.05. Written into the project before the first design file opens, then measured and reported at launch. A redesign that looks better and loads slower has made your business worse.
PRINCIPLE 02
Educate. Don't dictate.
You get the diagnosis even if you do not hire us.
Send us your URL and we will tell you the three things costing you the most, in writing, before you owe us anything. Some of those companies hire us. Some fix it themselves. Both outcomes are fine.
05 / THE STACK
- WordPress
- Advanced Custom Fields
- Next.js
- React
- Astro
- Shopify
- Sanity
- Tailwind CSS
- GSAP
- Screaming Frog
- Google Search Console
- WP Engine
- Cloudflare
- Figma
We will rebuild on the platform that fits your team, not the one that fits our habits. Sometimes the honest answer is that your current platform is fine and the problem is what was built on top of it.
See the full Web & Digital discipline06 / STRAIGHT ANSWERS
Redesign questions, answered plainly.
A focused redesign for a small business or nonprofit typically runs in the low to mid five figures. A larger marketing site with custom templates and integrations runs mid to high five figures. Enterprise redesigns go into six. The number of unique templates and the integration work drive the cost far more than page count does.
Not if the migration is done properly, and this is the single most common way a redesign damages a business. Every URL gets mapped and tested before launch, metadata and structure get preserved, and we monitor Search Console daily for thirty days after. Ask any agency you are considering how they handle redirects. The answer tells you most of what you need to know.
Ten to sixteen weeks for most projects. The two things that stretch a timeline are content and decisions, both of which live on your side. We give you a written list of exactly what we need from you and when, at the start, so nothing surprises anyone in week nine.
Usually, and often we recommend it. If your team knows WordPress and the real problem is a bloated theme and a broken structure, moving platforms adds cost and retraining for no gain. We will tell you when a platform change is genuinely worth it and when it is just an agency preference.
Both, usually. The content inventory in phase one marks every page keep, rewrite, or kill. Pages that rank get preserved and sharpened rather than replaced. Pages nobody has visited in two years get cut, which is often the most valuable thing that happens in a redesign.
Redesigning because it looks dated, or because it is not working?
Send us the URL. We will tell you which one it is and what the three biggest problems are, before you owe us anything.