Signs your website needs a redesign
A site usually needs rebuilding because the business has changed and the site has not. The usual signs:
- It looks dated. A tired site creates doubt before anyone contacts you, and buyers compare you with your competitors in seconds.
- It brings in few enquiries. Weak calls to action, confusing navigation and long forms are the common causes.
- It is slow. Heavy themes, oversized images and stacked plugins add up, and Google measures speed on your visitors’ phones.
- It is awkward on a phone. Small text and fiddly menus lose leads on the device most people browse on.
- Your team cannot update it. Every small change waits for a developer, or the page builder breaks the layout.
- It no longer describes what you sell. New services were bolted on, old ones linger, and the navigation tells the history of the business rather than the offer.
- It was never built for search. Structure, metadata and internal links were left until the end, and AI search tools struggle to read the content.
- It is hard to keep secure. Out-of-date plugins and a theme nobody dares update are a risk in their own right.
If three or more apply, a rebuild usually costs less than years of patching. If only one applies, a targeted fix may be enough, and we will tell you so.
What a website revamp in Ireland involves compared with a rebuild
A website redesign improves the design, content and user experience of a site. Most projects fall into one of three kinds:
- A revamp. The lighter version, for a site that is technically sound: refreshed templates, rewritten pages, clearer calls to action and faster images, on the same platform.
- A rebuild. New templates, a new content structure and performance fixed at the root, often with new integrations. Choose it when the site is slow, hard to manage or limited by its technology.
- A replatform. A move to new technology altogether, such as WordPress to a custom application or WooCommerce to Shopify.
Every project opens with a short consult that decides which one you need. Sometimes the answer is to keep the current site and fix a few pages. If you are unsure whether the problem sits in the design or the build, a UX audit shows where visitors struggle.
Moving from your current web designer
Switching to a new web design company is a common reason for a redesign, and the first job is finding out who controls each part of the old site. Before any design work we check access to:
- The domain and DNS. Where the domain is registered, who can log in, and which records point the website and the email at their services.
- The hosting and backups. A full copy of the current site, its files and its database, taken before anything changes.
- The CMS, theme and plugin licences. Admin access for your own team, and any paid licence that has to move across or be replaced.
- Analytics and Search Console. Owner access to Google Analytics, Search Console, Tag Manager and your Google Business Profile, so the history comes with you.
Anything only the old supplier can reach is moved into your control first. The new site is then built from that full copy on a staging address, so your current site keeps running untouched until launch day. If your previous developer has gone quiet, we work from what you can still reach and tell you plainly what will have to be recreated.
What our website redesign services in Dublin include
We start from your analytics and Search Console data: which pages earn traffic, which queries you rank for and where visitors leave. Then the work covers:
- A content audit. Every page sorted into keep, merge, rewrite or retire, so the new site carries what earns traffic and drops what does not.
- Structure and copy. A page for each service, navigation built around what buyers look for, and copy written as part of the design.
- Design for phones first. Mobile screens designed in their own right, inside a design system your team can extend.
- Engineering for speed and search. Core Web Vitals, structured data and accessible markup, as in our guide to building a high-performance website, plus pages that ChatGPT and Google’s AI Overviews can read, covered under AI-ready website development.
- A CMS your team runs. WordPress for content-led sites, Shopify or WooCommerce for stores, custom code where the workflow needs it, with training before launch.
- Forms and integrations. Enquiry and booking forms that feed your CRM, as covered in CRM integration in Ireland, and analytics that carry across from the old site, so you can compare results before and after launch.
- Accessibility. Templates built to WCAG 2.1 AA, tested with automated tools and by keyboard before the new site goes live.
- Ownership. The code, the content and the data are yours.
How the migration protects your rankings
Most redesign damage happens at launch, when old URLs disappear without redirects. We plan the move in four stages:
- Before design. Every indexed URL is exported, the ones that earn traffic are marked, and the queries each page ranks for are recorded.
- During build. Every old URL is mapped to its closest new page, titles and headings are written for each page, and the staging site stays out of Google’s index.
- At launch. The 301 redirects go live with the new site and are tested one by one, the new sitemap is submitted, and analytics, forms and payments are checked again.
- After launch. Search Console is checked daily for a fortnight, and rankings are compared with the recorded queries after four to six weeks.
The details that slip most often get a check of their own: the staging site’s noindex tag must not travel to the live site, every redirect has to land in one hop, internal links and the XML sitemap must point at final addresses, and titles, headings and structured data carry across. Pages that are gone for good answer 410 Gone rather than redirecting to the home page, because Google keeps asking for old addresses for years. In October 2026 our own server logs still showed Googlebot requesting pages from an office-supplies shop that used the loco.ie domain years before we did.
Our own site is the proof. Two days after loco.ie moved off WordPress in September 2026, all 54 of its old addresses resolved in a single 301, with no redirect chains. All 23 key pages we inspected were indexed, with Google choosing our canonical address for each one. The full thirteen-step list, with what slipped and what we changed, is in our website redesign SEO checklist.
Our website redesign process and timeline
Each redesign runs through five stages, and the plan you approve at the end of the consult puts a date on every one.
- Consult. We read your analytics, Search Console and the current site, list what earns traffic and agree the scope. It ends in a costed plan with dated milestones, and the price is fixed before design starts.
- Content and structure. The page plan, the URL map and the copy, agreed before design so the structure cannot drift.
- Design. The key templates on phone and desktop, built as a design system, for you to review and sign off before anything is engineered.
- Build and migration. The site is built on a password-protected staging copy, the content is moved and checked, and every redirect is written and tested.
- Launch and aftercare. The redirects go live with the site, forms, payments and tracking are checked again, and Search Console is read every day for a fortnight.
How long it takes depends on the number of templates, the content to migrate and the integrations. A revamp of a sound site moves quickest; a rebuild with new content, a new platform or ecommerce takes longer. You see the schedule before design starts, and it changes only if the scope does.
Redesigns we have built
Redesigns and rebuilds are a large part of our work, and most of the websites on our work page replaced one that came before. Four of them in detail:
Total Expo: nine fixed designs, built into a site that moves
Total Expo, which builds exhibition stands and event spaces, needed one site for three different buyers. Its visual direction arrived fixed, as nine desktop designs at one width. We added the responsive design system and the motion, gave each audience its own route, and built it on WordPress with a CMS the team runs. The site has been live since December 2024, and the Total Expo team edits every page without a designer. Read the Total Expo case study.
Trident Holiday Homes: rebuilt for guests choosing on a phone
Trident lets more than 1,000 self-catering holiday homes across Ireland, listed on the big booking platforms and bookable direct on its own site. We rebuilt the site after reading Trident’s own analytics: map-and-filter search, and availability and reserve screens with every state drawn before development began. We designed and rebuilt it in 2024, working through our partner Altitude. Read the Trident Holiday Homes case study.
ERP HEADtoHEAD: an event site with its own booking engine
Lumenia Consulting sold its ERP HEADtoHEAD events through a ticketing platform. The rebuilt site has a booking engine of its own on WooCommerce and Stripe: Dublin bookings are invoiced by the Irish company in euro with no ticketing fees, and the engine is set up to bill each event from its own company. At launch, Lumenia described the new site as “a fresh look, easier navigation and a simpler way to explore and register for our events”. Read the ERP HEADtoHEAD case study.
ESMA International Network: from WordPress to one platform
ESMA’s old WordPress site listed members but had no member dashboard or apps. We replaced it with one purpose-built platform: a public site, a members’ area, iOS and Android apps and an admin back office. It went live on 5 August 2026, with the 338 redirects from the old website’s addresses still in place. Read the ESMA case study.
More of them on the work page: the IPAV website, rebuilt on WordPress with a custom theme beside the Institute’s new membership platform; the Irish School of Motoring, rebuilt around a single booking spine so learners can book from every lesson page; the Field Queens Shopify store, redesigned on the Mode theme; and Altitude Internet, whose WordPress site we rebuilt in 2023 on a repeating system, so a new service does not need a redesign of its own.
Once a new site is live, we can also make a short web promo of it in motion for your launch posts, like the films on the Total Expo and Trident case studies, produced with our motion graphics partners.
How much does a website redesign in Dublin cost?
Redesign and rebuild projects at Loco start from €10,000 ex VAT. Page count, content, custom functionality, integrations, the migration and any accessibility requirements move the price, as they do for any website build in Ireland. A revamp of a sound site sits nearer that starting point than a replatform with new integrations. The consult ends in a costed plan with a timeline, and the price is fixed before design starts.
Hosting, monitoring and improvements are available on a retainer from €2,000 a month. The retainer is optional, and you keep everything if the project ends at launch.
For a store, see ecommerce development in Dublin. For a new site with nothing to migrate, see web design in Dublin or our web development service.
