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Redesigns  ·  7 min read

7 signs your website needs a redesign

Seven signs your website needs a redesign, how to check each one yourself in a few minutes, and when a smaller fix will do instead.

By Taylor Odom  ·   ·  Updated

The short answer: redesign when the problems are in how the site is built, not just in what it says. The clearest signs are a site that's hard to use on a phone, slow to load, missing HTTPS, full of accessibility errors, or impossible for you to edit. If the only problem is an old phone number or photo, fix that instead.

Most small business websites don't break all at once. They drift: the hours go stale, the person who built the site moves on, and phones and browsers change around it. Here are seven signs your website needs a redesign rather than a touch-up, each with a check you can do yourself in a few minutes.

What are the signs your website needs a redesign?

1. It's hard to use on a phone

Pew Research Center's 2025 survey found that 91% of U.S. adults own a smartphone, and 16% are "smartphone-only" internet users, with no home broadband. For many of your customers, the phone version of your site is the only one they'll see.

Google sees it the same way. Its documentation says it "uses the mobile version of a site's content, crawled with the smartphone agent, for indexing and ranking." If something is missing from your site on a phone, Google treats it as missing.

How to check: open your site on your phone. Can you read it without zooming? Does the menu open? Does tapping the phone number start a call? Can you fill in the contact form with your thumb?

2. It's slow to load

Google publishes targets for page experience, called Core Web Vitals. The main content should appear within 2.5 seconds, the page should respond to a tap within 200 milliseconds, and things shouldn't jump around as it loads (a layout-shift score of 0.1 or less). Google says to measure these at the 75th percentile of visits, so slower phones and connections count too.

How to check: paste your address into Google's free PageSpeed Insights tool (pagespeed.web.dev) and look at the mobile results. Oversized images can be fixed in place; a heavy theme or a stack of plugins usually can't.

3. Chrome warns people before opening it

If your address starts with http:// rather than https://, the connection isn't encrypted. Google announced in October 2025 that from Chrome 154, the browser turns on its "Always Use Secure Connections" setting by default, and "will ask for the user's permission before the first access to any public site without HTTPS." A customer who meets that warning may just go back to the search results.

How to check: type your address with http:// in front and see whether it switches to https:// and loads without a warning. On its own, this is usually a setting at your web host. If nobody has the login to change it, see sign 5.

4. Customers can't find how to call or book

For most local businesses, visitors want three things fast: the phone number, the area you serve, and a way to book or ask for a quote. If those are buried on a Contact page, or the phone number is part of an image that can't be tapped, the site is making customers work.

How to check: hand your phone to someone who hasn't used your site and ask them to book an appointment or request a quote. Watch where they tap, and count how many taps it takes.

5. You can't update it yourself

Old hours, a staff member who left years ago, last season's specials, a copyright year that gives away the site's age. Each is small, but together they tell visitors nobody is minding the shop. When they pile up, the real problem is usually access: the person who built the site has moved on, the platform is locked, or you don't know which account the domain is registered to.

How to check: could you change your hours today, without calling anyone? Do you know where your domain is registered, and is it in your name? If either answer is no, sort that out first. It's one of the questions to ask before you hire a web designer.

6. It fails basic accessibility checks

WebAIM's 2026 analysis of the top one million home pages found detectable WCAG 2 failures on 95.9% of them, averaging 56.1 errors per page. The most common were low-contrast text (83.9% of pages), images with no text description (53.1%) and form fields with no label (51%).

The Department of Justice's guidance says the ADA's requirements for businesses open to the public apply to what they offer, "including those offered on the web." And an accessibility widget added on top doesn't fix the code underneath. We explain why in do accessibility widgets make your website ADA compliant?

How to check: run your homepage through WebAIM's free WAVE checker (wave.webaim.org), then try getting around your site using only the Tab key. A few errors can be fixed in place; the same errors on every page usually come from the template.

7. It doesn't show up for the services you offer

If you do roofing, gutters and siding but your site has one "Services" page listing all three, you're giving Google one page to match three different searches. Whitespark's 2026 Local Search Ranking Factors survey, which asks local search experts what matters most, put a dedicated page for each service at the top of its factors for local organic results. A mobile-friendly site made the top five. That's expert opinion, not a guarantee, but it makes a strong case for one page per service.

How to check: search Google for your main service and your town, the way a customer would. Then look at your own site: does each service you want to be found for have its own page, with its own heading and a real description?

Can you fix these without a full redesign?

Often, yes. A content problem or two (an old phone number, stale hours, a broken link) is quick work for whoever has access. If nobody on your team has the time, our $495 website fix-up handles that kind of work on the platform you already use.

A redesign makes sense when:

  • several signs show up together, especially 1, 2 and 6, which often trace back to the same outdated theme or builder
  • the problem is the structure, such as no room for a page per service, or a layout that can't be made to work on a phone
  • you can't get access, so every small fix means chasing someone

If you can't tell which you're facing, send us your address and we'll tell you what we see.

How do you redesign a website without losing your Google rankings?

The biggest risk in a redesign is broken page addresses. Google's guidance for site moves recommends "server side permanent redirects from the old URLs to the new URLs," based on a map of every old page and its new home, and says to keep those redirects "generally at least 1 year."

Before a redesign starts, ask for:

  • a list of every current page and where it will live on the new site
  • permanent (301) redirects for every address that changes
  • the new site built on a preview link, so the old one stays up until launch
  • your same domain name, pointed at the new site

Even when it's done right, Google says your visibility "may fluctuate temporarily during the move," and that this is normal. Our page on website redesigns explains how we handle each step.

What does a website redesign cost?

With us, a redesign uses the same published packages as a new site:

  • Starter Site, $4,500: 1–2 weeks, 4–5 pages.
  • Business Site, $8,500: 3–4 weeks, 8–12 pages, with service pages, team pages, and booking or a small store.
  • Custom Build, $15,000+: 6–8 weeks, for multiple locations, full e-commerce or integrations.

Every build is mobile-first, built to WCAG 2.1 AA in the code, and registered in your name. The price is fixed for the written scope: half to book your slot and half at launch, or six monthly payments on a Starter or Business Site. For how that compares with other options, see what a small business website costs in South Carolina.

Frequently asked questions

How often should a small business redesign its website?

There's no set schedule. Instead of redesigning on a calendar, check your site against the seven signs above once a year, and redesign when several show up at once.

Will a redesign hurt my Google rankings?

It can if old page addresses break. With every old address redirected to its new page, Google says any change in visibility during the move is normal and settles down over time.

Can I keep my domain name?

Yes. It just points to the new site. If you're not sure who controls it, find out before the redesign starts.

This post is general information, not legal advice.

Sources

Want a website with the price printed on the page?

Starter Site $4,500 · Business Site $8,500 · Custom Build $15,000+. Written scope, a launch date, and you own everything.

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