10 signs your website needs a redesign.

Most business owners don't look at their own website very often. You built it, it went live, and then you got back to running the business. Meanwhile your customers are looking at it all the time, usually on their phones, usually while comparing you to two or three competitors.

Here are the signs we see most often that a site is past its best, and what to do about each one.

1. It's awkward to use on a phone

Open your website on your phone right now. Can you read the text without zooming? Can you tap the menu, find your phone number and call you with one tap? If you have to pinch, scroll sideways or hunt for the contact info, a lot of your visitors are leaving.

Sites built before mobile-first design was the norm often "work" on phones, technically, but they're painful to use. That's usually a redesign job, not a quick fix.

2. It's slow

If your pages take more than a few seconds to show anything, people go back to Google and pick someone else. Slow sites also tend to do worse in search.

The good news: speed can sometimes be fixed without a redesign. Our guide on why your website is slow covers the usual causes. If the slowness comes from a bloated theme or page builder, though, a rebuild is often the cleaner fix.

3. It looks dated next to your competitors

You don't need a trendy website. You do need one that looks like a business that's still open and still cares. Stock photos from 2014, cramped layouts and tiny fonts make people wonder whether you're still around.

Search for your main service in your town and open your top three competitors' sites. If yours looks noticeably older, customers notice too.

4. The information is out of date

Old hours, staff who left years ago, services you don't offer anymore, a "latest news" post from 2019. Each one chips away at trust. If you're not updating the site because it's too hard to edit, that's a sign in itself.

5. You can't update it yourself

If changing a phone number means emailing a developer and waiting a week, or you're stuck on a platform you don't understand, the site won't stay current. A good redesign should leave you with a site you can update easily, and a clear answer on who does what.

6. It doesn't bring in calls or enquiries

This is the one that matters most. A website's job is to turn visitors into customers. If you're getting traffic but no calls, the usual culprits are:

• No clear phone number or call button at the top of every page
• Service pages that don't say what you actually do, where, or roughly what it costs
• No reviews, photos of real work or other reasons to trust you
• A contact form that's long, broken or goes to an inbox nobody checks

Some of these are quick fixes. If it's all of them, start over.

7. You're invisible on Google

If you don't show up when people search for your service in your town, your website is often part of the problem. Thin pages, no page per service, missing titles and descriptions, and slow load times all hold you back. A redesign is a good moment to fix the structure, as long as it's done carefully (more on that below). See why your business isn't showing up on Google for the other common causes.

8. It's not secure

If your browser shows "Not secure" next to your address, your site doesn't have a working SSL certificate. That scares people off, especially on contact forms. Old WordPress sites with years of skipped updates are another security risk. These can be fixed on their own, but they're often a symptom of a site nobody's been looking after.

9. It isn't accessible

Light grey text, missing image descriptions, forms you can't use with a keyboard. If your business has 50 or more employees in Ontario, the AODA requires your site to meet WCAG 2.0 AA, and the 2026 compliance report asks you to confirm it. Even if you're smaller, an accessible site is easier for everyone to use.

10. Your business has changed, but the site hasn't

New services, a new area, a new focus, a rebrand. If your website still describes the business you were five years ago, it's sending the wrong customers your way and missing the right ones.

Redesign or refresh?

Not every tired website needs to be torn down. A rough rule of thumb:

• A refresh is enough when the site is reasonably modern, works on phones and is easy to edit, but needs better photos, updated content, a speed tune-up or a few new pages.
• A redesign makes sense when it's slow because of how it's built, awkward on phones, hard to edit, or the platform itself is holding you back. At that point, patching costs more than it saves.

How to redesign without losing your Google rankings

This is where redesigns go wrong. A new site launches, it looks great, and a month later the phone goes quiet because Google can't find half the old pages. To avoid that:

1. List every page on the current site and note which ones get traffic or rank.
2. Keep the same web addresses where you can. Where a page moves or merges, set up a 301 redirect from the old address to the new one.
3. Carry over what's working: page titles, descriptions, and the content that ranks.
4. Keep your Google Analytics and Search Console connected so you can see what changes.
5. Check after launch for broken links and pages Google can't find, and submit the new sitemap.

If you're also moving to a new host or platform, our guide on switching hosts without losing rankings covers the extra steps, including keeping your email working.

What does a redesign cost?

It depends on the size of the site and what it needs to do. Our guide to what a website costs in Ontario breaks down real prices, from a $999 three-page starter site to larger custom builds and online stores. Whoever you hire, get a fixed quote that spells out what's included, and make sure you'll own the site and the domain at the end.