Redesign or redevelop? How to know when it’s time to update your site

Updated October 2026.

We often get folks calling us because their website is getting out of date and they don’t know exactly what to do. Maybe the business has changed, or has scaled up, and they need the site to better reflect that. Maybe their marketing materials have been updated but their website has not. Perhaps they are having site speed issues, or security issues. Or perhaps the site has been through many different redesigns and updates and has become something of a Frankenstein, pieced together with digital masking tape.

Whatever the reason, we’re glad you’re thinking of overhauling your website. This article will help you work out whether you need a redesign or a redevelopment, and how to start.

Redesign Versus Redevelopment: What’s the Difference?

A website redesign is when you take the existing website and make changes to the way it looks. For the most part, the underlying structure and functionality stay the same, but you give it a new visual impact. This might include some other changes as well: some new copy, perhaps a new page or two, or a form. But the basic bones of the website stay the same.

A website redevelopment, or rebuild, is when you build a new website from scratch. You may include elements of the previous website, but you set about rebuilding the structure and functionality of the site.

Home renovation provides a good analogy. A redesign is equivalent to a new coat of paint, new furniture and a new carpet. The room feels and looks different even though the underlying footprint and structure of the room stays the same. A redevelopment is when you gut the room completely and rebuild everything, perhaps knocking down a wall or changing the architecture in the meantime. Both are important steps, but they are very different projects – different timelines, different purposes, and different budgets.

Common Redesign Scenarios:

• You have been through a rebranding, resulting in a new style guide for your brand. The website needs to reflect the new branding – new logo, typeface, color scheme, visuals, etc.
• You have done a competitor analysis and you see that your website seems dated. New photos and a new visual approach can make it feel more contemporary.
• Some of the content on the site is obsolete and needs to be switched out. Perhaps you want to emphasize different pages, or reorganize the content in some way.
• You have added new products and/or services, and you’d like to incorporate them into the site. This requires new pages and also working these new pages into the overall architecture. You also want to change the linking structure and some of the content on existing pages to accommodate the new material.

Common Redevelopment Scenarios:

• Your site was created more than ten years ago and hasn’t been updated much.
• Your site gets steady traffic, but few visitors get in touch or buy, and you’d like to make better use of the visitors you already have.
• You find the current site burdensome to maintain and it is time consuming to add content or manage the data from a CMS.
• Your site doesn’t work well on phones. Google crawls and indexes sites as a phone sees them, so a poor mobile site costs you in search as well as with visitors.
• Your site runs on software that no longer gets security fixes, such as an abandoned theme or plugin, or a version of PHP that PHP no longer supports, and updating it would mean rebuilding large parts anyway.
• Your site can’t meet accessibility standards such as WCAG 2.2 without major changes to its templates and code.
• Your business has scaled up and the old site can’t keep up with the traffic and activity – you may be having server or site speed issues, or eCommerce functionality issues.
• Your organization has gone through a rebranding or restructuring process and the site needs to change in significant ways to reflect changes in the organization.

What Next?

You’ve decided it’s time to redesign or redevelop your site. Here are some things to keep in mind as you begin.

• Be sure you have the time and resources to dedicate to the project. This is a big step and you want to be sure you do it right. Rushing a website out the door, or cutting corners, will often only result in headaches down the road. Our website redesign project plan sets out the eight steps from goals to launch.
• Work with a reputable agency and have a clearly agreed upon budget and timeline. You want to be sure that the resulting website works well for you, on both the front- and back-end. Be wary of agencies that develop the whole site “behind closed doors”, i.e. without any input or transparency.
• Take the time to make sure that you are serving all your users and target audience. The needs of an affiliate marketing manager and a PPC manager are different. The needs of a returning customer are different from those of a new customer. Be sure to account for all your users before you start building the new site or redesigning the old.
• Protect your search rankings as you go. Pages that rank well and bring in visitors should be handled with care: keep their addresses, or redirect each old address to its new page, and keep the content that earns the rankings. A redesign that changes addresses or drops well-written copy can leave you with a website you love that fewer people see. Our guide to redesigning without losing SEO has a full checklist.

Ready to take your site to the next level?

A website is best when it is a living, growing and changing entity. Every so often, it’s good to take a hard look at your site (perhaps giving it an audit) and see how you can improve it. When you’re ready to take the next step and bring your site to the next level, contact Millennial Web Development and we’ll make sure that your website comes out looking, functioning and converting better than ever.

Contact us today.