Your website is not old. It is quietly losing you work.
A website redesign is not about fashion. It is about the enquiries you never hear about, because the site loaded too slowly, read badly on a phone, or never showed up in the search in the first place. We rebuild it fast, and we carry your rankings across instead of throwing them away.
RebuildingWithout losing your rankings
- People say they could not find you on Google
- It looks broken on a phone
- You are embarrassed to send the link
- Nobody can update it without calling someone
- The enquiry form stopped working and nobody noticed
- It has not been touched since 2019
Should I redesign my website, or leave it alone?
Tick everything that is true of your current site. The score updates as you go, and the answer at the end is honest, including when the answer is that you do not need us yet.
Nothing ticked yet
Work through the list on the left and we will tell you honestly whether a redesign is worth your money.
Send this for a quoteSix signs you need a website redesign
Every one of these costs money quietly, which is why they get ignored for years. If three or more apply to you, a website redesign has probably already paid for itself in work you never won.
It loads slowly
Most people leave a page that takes longer than three seconds. They do not complain, they just go to the next result. Speed is a ranking factor too, measured against the public Core Web Vitals thresholds, so a slow site loses twice.
It breaks on a phone
The majority of South African web traffic is mobile. If your site was designed for a desktop screen in 2018, most of your visitors are seeing the worst version of your business.
Google cannot read it properly
Missing headings, no structured data, thin pages, duplicate titles. The site exists, but search engines cannot work out what it is for, so it never ranks.
You cannot change anything yourself
If updating a price means emailing the person who built it four years ago, the content will never stay current. That is a business problem, not a technical one.
It is not secure
No SSL certificate, or a WordPress install that has not been patched in years. Browsers now warn visitors before they even see your homepage, and unpatched sites get hacked.
It does not look like the business you are now
You have grown, changed services, or moved upmarket, and the site still tells the old story. A website makeover South Africa businesses ask for most often starts right here, with a company that outgrew its own website.
What a website redesign typically changes. Figures illustrative.
Website redesign, or start again from scratch?
These are two different jobs at two different prices, and picking wrong is expensive. The rule of thumb is simple: if the site ranks for anything at all, redesign it. If it has never ranked and has no content worth keeping, start fresh.
| What matters | Website redesign | Brand new build |
|---|---|---|
| Keeps your existing Google rankings | Yes | No |
| Keeps the backlinks pointing at your old pages | Yes | Only with redirects |
| Keeps years of search history on the domain | Yes | No |
| Faster to launch | Usually | Not always |
| Cheaper when content already exists | Yes | No |
| Better when the old content is unusable | No | Yes |
| Better when the business has changed completely | No | Yes |
| Right choice for a site with no traffic at all | No | Yes |
The audit tells us which one you are, and we will say so plainly even when the answer costs us the bigger job. A new build is quoted from our website design packages instead.
A website redesign should not cost you your Google rankings
This is the single most common disaster in this industry. A business pays for a beautiful new site, launches it, and watches its traffic collapse within a fortnight. The design was fine. The migration was not.
Every ranking you hold today is attached to a specific URL. Change those URLs without redirects, drop the page structure, or lose the content that was ranking, and Google treats the new site as a stranger. Recovering takes months, if it happens at all. Google publishes its own guidance on this in the site move with URL changes documentation, and a redesign quote that does not mention redirects has not read it.
What a careless rebuild does
- Old URLs disappear with no redirects in place
- Page titles and headings rewritten with no record of what ranked
- Content trimmed because it "looked long"
- Images renamed and alt text lost
- Nobody checks Search Console afterwards
What we do instead
- Full crawl and ranking snapshot before a single page is touched
- 301 redirect map from every old URL to its new home
- Ranking pages rebuilt, not replaced, with their content intact
- Schema markup added rather than removed
- Search Console monitored for a month after launch, with a report
The ranking snapshot, before and after
We take a full position record before the rebuild and again thirty days after launch. On a call we will screen share both, on a client account, so you can see whether the rankings held.
The redirect map itself
Every old URL, every new destination, in one spreadsheet. Ask any agency to show you theirs from a recent project. Most cannot, because they never built one.
Search Console, live
Clicks and impressions across the launch date. This is the graph that exposes a bad migration within a fortnight, and it is the first thing we would show you.
Speed scores you can re-run
We will give you the address of a site we rebuilt so you can test it yourself in PageSpeed Insights. Not a screenshot from us, a live result you generate.
None of that is a testimonial, and that is deliberate. Anyone can write a quote. Nobody can fake a Search Console graph on a screen share.
Five stages, two to four weeks
Every website redesign we run follows the same five stages. Your existing site stays live and untouched throughout. We build alongside it and switch over only when you have signed it off.
Audit and snapshot
We crawl the current site, record what ranks and where, list every URL, and find what is broken. You get that audit whether or not you go ahead with us.
Structure and plan
We map the new site: which pages survive, which merge, which get written fresh, and where every old URL will redirect to.
Build on a staging site
The new site is built on a private URL nobody can find. Your current site keeps running and keeps taking enquiries the whole time.
Review and sign off
You get the staging link and two rounds of changes. Nothing goes live until you say so.
Migrate and monitor
Redirects go in, the site goes live, and we watch Search Console for a month to catch anything that slipped. You get a written report at the end of it.
What a website redesign costs in South Africa
A website redesign is quoted after the audit, because the work depends on what you already have. These are the ranges we work within, and the number is fixed in writing before you pay anything.
Straight redesign
Up to five pages, existing content restructured, full redirect map, mobile-first rebuild. The usual starting point for a small business site.
Rebuild and expand
Eight to twelve pages, service pages rebuilt as a search silo, new copy where the old pages were too thin to rank.
Store rebuild
WooCommerce migration with products, payment gateway and delivery rules carried across, plus the full redirect map.
Included in every website redesign, at every price
- Free audit and ranking snapshot before you commit
- Full 301 redirect map from every old URL
- Mobile-first rebuild on WordPress
- Schema markup and clean heading structure
- Speed and Core Web Vitals work
- Staging site, so you are never offline
- Two rounds of changes before launch
- Thirty days of Search Console monitoring after launch
- Care plan from R1,250 a month, optional but recommended
- AI site assistant from R4,500, optional
Extra pages are R950 each. Full pricing for every service sits on website design packages.
Website redesign questions we get asked
How much does a website redesign cost in South Africa?
Ours start at R9,500 for a straight rebuild of up to five pages, R16,500 for an eight to twelve page site, and R28,000 for an online store. A website makeover South Africa agencies quote can land anywhere from a few thousand rand to six figures, so what matters is what the number covers. Ask specifically whether redirects, content migration and post-launch monitoring are included, because those are the parts that get quietly left out.
Should I redesign my website or build a new one?
If the site ranks for anything at all, redesign rather than replace. Starting from a blank domain throws away years of search history. If the current site has no traffic, no rankings and no content worth keeping, a fresh build is usually cheaper and faster. The audit at stage one tells us which of the two you are, and we will say so plainly even when the cheaper answer is the right one.
Will my website redesign hurt my Google rankings?
Not if it is done properly. Ranking losses after a rebuild come from missing redirects, deleted content and changed URLs, not from new design. We snapshot the rankings first, map every old URL to a new one, keep the pages that earn traffic, and monitor Search Console for a month afterwards. That process is why the risk sits close to zero.
Will my website be offline during the redesign?
No. The new site is built on a separate staging URL while your current one keeps running and keeps taking enquiries. The switch happens in a few minutes once you have signed it off, usually outside working hours.
Can you redesign a site you did not build?
Yes, and most of our redesign work is exactly that. WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, Joomla or hand-coded, it makes no difference. We rebuild on WordPress because you can maintain it yourself and it is not tied to one vendor.
How long does a website redesign take?
Two to four weeks for most business websites once we have your content and sign-off. Online stores take longer, depending on how many products need migrating. The audit and planning stages take the first week, so the build itself is quicker than people expect.
What if I only need part of the site fixed?
Then say so and we will quote for that instead. Sometimes the honest answer is a speed fix and three rewritten pages rather than a full redesign. We would rather do the small job well than sell you the big one.
Will a redesign hurt my Google rankings?
Only if it is done carelessly. The risk is real and it is why we map every existing URL to its new home and put 301 redirects in place before launch. Done properly, rankings hold and usually improve because the new site is faster and better structured.
Can you keep my existing content?
Yes, and often we should. Pages already ranking are assets. We audit which content is earning traffic, keep and improve those, and rewrite only what is genuinely underperforming.
How do I know if I need a redesign or a new site?
If the content and structure are sound and the design is dated, a redesign is cheaper. If the site is built on something unmaintainable or the structure itself is the problem, a rebuild costs less than fighting it. The audit tells you which, and we will say so even when it is the smaller invoice.
What if my site is not on WordPress?
That is fine, and common. We migrate from Wix, Squarespace, Joomla, custom PHP and older builds regularly. The content comes across, the URLs get mapped, and you end up somewhere you can actually maintain.
Will my site be faster after the redesign?
Almost always substantially, because most older sites are slow for the same handful of reasons: unoptimised images, bloated page builders and cheap hosting. We show you the before and after scores rather than asking you to take it on trust.
Can you redesign only part of my site?
Yes. Sometimes the answer is rebuilding the homepage and service pages while leaving a large blog untouched. That costs less and gets the commercial pages right, which is where the money is.
What happens to my email during the move?
Nothing. Email and website hosting are separate services, and we do not touch your mail records. If they are tangled together on one old host we plan the move around it so nothing goes dark.
The rest of what we build
A redesign is one part of it. Everything below is built by the same people, on the same stack, and quoted the same way. Start from website design company in South Africa for the overview.
Send your web address. Get a free redesign audit in 24 hours.
Send us your web address and we will tell you what is holding the site back, what is worth keeping, and what a website redesign would actually cost. If the answer is that you do not need one yet, we will say that too.