Nine things to fix before you pay anyone for a redesign

When a site stops bringing in work, a redesign feels like the answer. Often the design is the one part that is fine.

Check the plumbing first

Does the contact form actually send?

Test it from an address outside your business. We have inherited sites where the form had been failing silently for most of a year, and the owner assumed demand had dried up.

How fast is it on a phone, on mobile data?

Not on your office wifi on a laptop. Most visitors are on a phone, and a site that takes four seconds loses a third of them before it renders.

Is it findable for the obvious things?

Search your own service plus your town. If you are not there, that is a content and structure problem, and a new design will not touch it.

Then check the words

Does the homepage say what you do, in the first line?

Not your values. What you do, where, and for whom.

Are the prices, or at least the ranges, on the site?

The single most common reason an enquiry does not arrive is that somebody could not work out whether they could afford you.

Is there a reason to believe you?

Reviews, real photographs of real work, and names. A stock photo of a handshake is worse than nothing.

Then look at the design

Is it the design, or is it the phone version?

Plenty of sites look fine on a desktop and fall apart at 375 pixels. That is often a fix, not a rebuild.

Does it still look like your business?

If the branding has moved on and the site has not, that is a real reason to redesign, and one worth paying for.

What does it cost you to change something?

If a price change means emailing an agency and waiting three days, the problem is the build, not the look. That is the one that justifies starting again.