Do I need a new website or a redesign?

Signs a redesign is enough

If the site loads quickly, your team can update it without trouble and the platform still fits your plans, a redesign can fix a lot. New layouts, clearer navigation, better copy and fresh photos can change how a site performs without touching the foundations. This is often the case for a site that’s three or four years old and just looks dated.

Redesigns also carry less risk. URLs, content and integrations stay where they are, so there’s less that can go wrong at launch and less to re-test afterwards.

Signs you need a fresh build

• Pages are slow even after image fixes, and Core Web Vitals stay poor.
• Every update risks breaking something, usually because of stacked plugins or an old theme.
• The platform can’t do what you now need, like proper location pages or structured content.
• You don’t control the code or can’t move it, which is a lock-in problem.
• Nobody understands how the site was built anymore.

In those cases a redesign just repaints a structure that will keep causing trouble.

Protecting what already works

Whichever you choose, start by checking Search Console for the pages that earn clicks. Keep their content and URLs where you can. Where URLs must change, map each old address to its new one with a 301 redirect. That’s the difference between a redesign that holds its traffic and one that quietly loses a lot of it. The redesign vs new build comparison goes deeper on the trade-offs.

Also save your analytics baseline before launch, so you can compare enquiries and traffic honestly afterwards rather than relying on how the new site feels.

I’d start with an hour of looking rather than an opinion. I check speed on a real phone, look at how the site is built, and pull the top pages from Search Console. If the bones are good, I recommend a redesign and say so plainly. If the platform is fighting you, I’d rebuild, keep every URL that earns traffic and redirect the rest. What I avoid is the in-between: a new look on an old theme that’s still slow and still hard to edit.