Signs your website needs a redesign
Your website might look fine on the surface. That does not mean it is doing its job. Most of the sites we are asked to rebuild were built a few years ago, updated occasionally, then left behind while the business moved on. These are the signs:
- It looks out of date. A cluttered or inconsistent site creates doubt before anyone speaks to you.
- It is not generating enquiries. Visitors arrive but do not call, book or buy. Weak calls to action, confusing navigation, long forms and buried service pages are the usual causes.
- It is slow. Bloated themes, oversized images, too many plugins and poor hosting add up, and Core Web Vitals are measured on your visitors’ phones, out on real networks.
- It works badly on a phone. On most Irish business sites the majority of sessions now arrive on a phone, and the ones we audit before a rebuild are no exception. Awkward menus, small text and hard-to-complete forms cost you leads every day.
- The content no longer reflects the business. If the site still describes the company you were three years ago, it attracts the wrong enquiries.
- Your team cannot update it. If every small change needs a developer, the site is limiting your marketing rather than supporting it.
- It was never built for search. A good-looking site can still perform badly in Google if structure, metadata, internal links and performance were left until the end.
If three or more apply, patching will not fix it: the problems compound and each small change costs more than the last. If only one applies, a smaller fix may be enough, and we will say so. We rebuild sites for companies in Cork, Galway and Limerick as often as for Dublin ones.
Website revamp in Ireland: redesign or rebuild?
The words get used interchangeably, but they are not the same job, and the difference affects the budget.
A website redesign improves the visual design, layout, content and user experience of a site that is technically sound. Ask for a website revamp in Ireland and most people mean a lighter version of this: refreshed pages and content on the existing platform. A website rebuild goes deeper. It may change the platform, rebuild the templates, restructure the content, improve performance, add integrations or build custom functionality.
A redesign is enough if the site is dated to look at but sound underneath. A rebuild is the better option if the site is slow, hard to manage, poorly structured or limited by old technology. We run a short discovery phase first, so the right approach is clear before design begins. Sometimes it shows the current site is worth keeping, and we say so.
Website redesign Dublin: what a project with Loco includes
Loco Digital is a digital product studio in Dublin 8. Our website redesign services run on the same three steps as everything we build: consult, design, build. The same senior people carry all three, so nothing is lost in a handover.
Consult
We start with what the site is meant to achieve: more enquiries, better leads, more sales, or a site your team can finally run themselves. Then we read the evidence. Your analytics and Search Console data show which pages earn traffic, which queries you already rank for, and where visitors leave. That reading sets the structure of the new site, not a moodboard.
Design
We design the system and the experience around how your customers actually buy: a clear page hierarchy, individual service pages rather than one general list, obvious next steps, and mobile screens designed in their own right rather than shrunk from desktop. Content is written or restructured as part of the design, because the messaging is what convinces people.
Build
We engineer the site for speed, accessibility and search from the start: Core Web Vitals, clean structured data, WCAG-aligned markup and a content system your team can update without a developer. WordPress for content-led sites, Shopify or headless for ecommerce, custom where the workflow demands it. You own the code, the content and the data.
What we deliberately keep
A redesign should protect what already works. On every project we keep:
- Your URLs, or a mapped redirect for every one that changes. Rankings attach to URLs.
- Your rankings. The pages and queries that already bring visitors are identified before design starts and carried into the new structure.
- Your analytics history. The same GA4 and Search Console properties continue, so you can compare before and after honestly.
- Content that performs. Strong pages are improved and kept.
- Working integrations. Forms, CRM, booking and payment flows are re-tested before launch.
The SEO website migration checklist we run on every redesign
Most redesign damage happens at launch, when old URLs disappear without redirects and Google treats the new site as a stranger. This is the SEO website migration checklist we work through, in order, on every revamp or rebuild.
Before design
- Export every indexed URL from the sitemap, Search Console and analytics, and record which ones earn traffic or rankings.
- Map every old URL to its new equivalent. A removed page redirects to the closest matching page, never to the homepage.
- Note the queries each page ranks for, so the new page keeps the same topic and core phrases.
During build
- Keep the URL structure where possible. Change it only for a reason you can name.
- Write titles, meta descriptions and headings for every page, with the target phrase in each.
- Carry over internal links, image alt text and structured data. Add FAQ and organisation schema where it fits.
- Keep the staging site out of Google’s index until launch.
At launch
- Put the 301 redirects live at the same moment as the new site, and test every one.
- Remove the noindex, submit the new XML sitemap and confirm the robots file allows crawling.
- Check GA4 and Tag Manager are firing on the new domain, including form submissions.
After launch
- Watch Search Console daily for the first fortnight: crawl errors, 404s and any drop in impressions.
- Re-test page speed and Core Web Vitals on the live server, on a phone.
- Review the rankings recorded in step 3 after four to six weeks and fix anything that slipped.
Use it with another supplier if you like; if you would rather we ran it, it is part of every project. It prevents the mistakes we are most often asked to repair: pages deleted without redirects, and SEO left until the end.
Two rebuilds, two very different briefs
Total Expo
Total Expo designs and builds exhibition stands and event spaces out of Dublin, selling to organisers, exhibitors and agencies who each want something different. It reached us with the visual direction already decided as nine desktop page designs and a launch date already set. It needed everything between a set of pictures and a working website: a responsive component system, the motion that had only existed as notes beside the artboards, and the WordPress build. It launched on the date, on a CMS the team still runs without us. Read the Total Expo case study.
Trident Holiday Homes
Trident lets self-catering holiday homes across Ireland, booked direct rather than through the big platforms, so the website is not a brochure for the business. It is the business. We rebuilt it, delivered through our partner Altitude, starting from a month of the client’s own session data rather than a moodboard, with most visits arriving on a phone and most from first-time visitors. The search, the map-led Explore view and the reserve component were designed first and hardest, every awkward state drawn before development began. The site is live and taking direct bookings across the full Irish inventory. Read the Trident Holiday Homes case study.
More examples are on our work page.
How much does a website redesign in Dublin cost?
It depends on the scale of the job, and on the same factors as any website build in Ireland. A brochure site redesign on a sound platform is a very different project from a full rebuild with new content, integrations, ecommerce and custom functionality. Page count, content, custom development, accessibility requirements, the migration itself and post-launch support all move the number.
Redesign and rebuild projects at Loco start from €10,000, and every project begins with a scoped, costed plan so you know the price and timeline before anything is designed. Ongoing hosting, monitoring and improvements are available on a monthly retainer from €2,000/month, though you are not obliged to take one: a project can end at launch and you keep everything.
If the site is primarily a store, see ecommerce development in Dublin. For a new site rather than a redesign, see websites and ecommerce or web design in Dublin.
