8 signs your website needs a redesign
A redesign costs money, so it has to be worth it. Here are the eight signs that actually matter — and the three reasons that aren't good enough on their own.
This article was translated from Danish. Read the original.
“I think it looks dated” is not a good enough reason to spend DKK 25,000. You look at your own website a hundred times more often than any customer does, and you get tired of it long before they do.
Here are the eight signs that genuinely point to a redesign — and the three that don’t.
1. It isn’t decent on mobile
More than 70% of visitors come from a phone. If they have to zoom, scroll sideways or hit buttons with a fingernail, you lose them.
Test it honestly: pick up your phone, go to the site, and try to find your phone number and send a message. If it took more than thirty seconds, you have a problem.
Google also indexes the mobile version first. If it is poor, that is the one you rank on.
2. It is slow
Open the site on 4G without wifi. If it takes more than three seconds before you can read anything, it is costing you both visitors and rankings.
You can measure it for free with PageSpeed Insights. Look especially at LCP — the time until the largest element is visible. Above 2.5 seconds is too slow by Google’s own yardstick.
Note: slow doesn’t always mean a redesign. Sometimes it is three oversized images, and then it is an afternoon’s work. Get it investigated before you build new.
3. You can’t change anything yourself
If you have to ring somebody to change an opening hour, the site doesn’t get updated. Then it still says “closed for Christmas 2023” in March.
An out-of-date site signals to both customers and Google that nobody is home.
4. It brings in no enquiries
This is the most important sign, and it requires you to measure.
If you don’t know how many people visit the site and how many get in touch, the first step isn’t a redesign — it is getting measurement set up. Search Console is free and takes ten minutes.
Once you have the numbers, and they are bad, work out which of the two is failing: if nobody is arriving, it is an SEO problem. If plenty arrive without getting in touch, it is a conversion problem. Those two require completely different interventions.
5. It no longer looks like your business
You have stopped doing what the front page says. Or you have three new services squeezed in under “other”.
When the site tells an outdated story, it works against you. Customers form an impression in under ten seconds, and that impression has to match what they get when they call.
6. Competitors are above you on everything
Search for what your customers would search for. Not your company name — what they type when they don’t know you exist: “carpenter Aalborg”, “physiotherapist Nørresundby”.
If you are on page three while three competitors share the first page, you are losing customers every single day without seeing it happen.
7. It is technically outdated or insecure
No SSL (https://), an outdated WordPress, plugins that haven’t been updated in two years. Chrome
warns visitors about insecure sites, and that is hard to recover from.
If the site is built in Flash, old jQuery, or on a platform that no longer exists, there is rarely anything to do but build new.
8. You are embarrassed to send the link
It sounds soft, but it is a real business cost. If you avoid mentioning the website when you talk to a potential customer, it isn’t working — whatever the analytics say.
The three reasons that aren’t enough on their own
“There are new design trends.” Trends change every other year. Your site has to be clear and fast, not fashionable. A clean site from 2021 sells perfectly well in 2026.
“We have a new logo.” That is an update, not a redesign. Colours, logo and typeface can be changed in a day.
“A competitor just got a new site.” Their new site says nothing about whether yours works. Measure your own numbers.
Redesign or a new site?
| Redesign | Built from scratch | |
|---|---|---|
| When | The structure and content still hold up | The platform is outdated, or everything has to change |
| Price | Typically 40–60% of a new site | Full price |
| Time | 1–2 weeks | 2–4 weeks |
| SEO risk | Small, if the URLs are preserved | Larger — requires careful redirects |
The most important technical detail for both: keep the URLs, or set up 301 redirects from the old ones to the new. Forget that, and you lose the rankings you have built up. We have seen sites lose most of their traffic in a redesign for exactly that reason — and it is entirely avoidable.
How to work out whether it is worth the money
Do the sums from the start:
- How many enquiries does the site produce a month today?
- What is a customer worth to you?
- If a redesign doubled that number — how long would it take to earn back?
If the answer is under a year, it is an easy decision. If the answer is five years, the money is better spent somewhere else.
We look for free
We do a free design check: you get an honest assessment of what could be improved, what it would cost, and whether a redesign is even the right thing for you.
Sometimes the answer is that the site is fine, and the problem is that nobody can find it. Then we say so — it is cheaper for both parties.
Frequently asked questions
Do I lose my Google rankings in a redesign? Not if it is done properly. Keep the URLs, or set up 301 redirects, and keep the copy. It is when content disappears without a redirect that the traffic does the same.
How long does a redesign take? 1–2 weeks for an ordinary business site, assuming the content is reused.
Can you redesign my WordPress site? Yes — either inside WordPress or by moving to a faster static solution. See WordPress or custom-built.
What does it cost? Typically 40–60% of the price of a new site. We give a fixed price after the design check — see prices.
Why us
Cheaper than most, and not worse for it
We are three developers. No project managers, no salespeople, no open-plan office downtown. That overhead is what you would otherwise be paying on top of the work itself, and it is why we can keep the price down on websites, webshops, web apps and mobile apps alike. Every price is published and fixed in writing before we start — from DKK 375 a month or DKK 3,995 one-time. See prices.
Cheaper does not mean less. We build and run our own products: NBS Booking, NBS Food and the KalorieTracker app, which is live in the App Store and Google Play. So we have already paid for the mistakes we advise you about. You talk to the person writing the code, and you own the code afterwards. If you want to move on without us, you can.