Challenge
Old URLs all redirect to the home page.
Agnotic approach
Every old URL maps to its closest new page; pages with no equivalent return 404 or 410 instead of a misleading redirect.
Website Redesign
Website redesign services
A new design can lose years of search traffic in a week if old URLs stop working. Agnotic Technologies redesigns business websites as planned site moves, so rankings, analytics history and accessibility come through the launch intact.
URL inventoryOne-to-one redirectsAnalytics parityPost-launch monitoring
Trusted by global innovators
Redesign as a site move
What does a website redesign involve beyond the new design?
A website redesign is a site move as much as a new design: URLs change, templates change and tracking breaks unless it is planned. Agnotic Technologies redesigns business websites with a content and URL inventory, a one-to-one 301 redirect map, analytics parity checks, WCAG 2.2 AA and Core Web Vitals budgets, and monitoring after launch.
The visual design is the part everyone sees. The inventory, redirects and tracking are the parts that decide whether traffic and leads survive the switch.
Healthcare websites have extra page rules for tracking tools, forms and price files; those are covered on our medical website design page.
Failure points
Where do website redesigns lose traffic?
The mistakes we see most often after other teams' redesign launches, and how we prevent each one.
Challenge
Redirects chain through two or three hops.
Agnotic approach
The map points each old URL straight to its final address, and old redirects from past redesigns are updated too.
Challenge
Pages that brought traffic are dropped because they looked old.
Agnotic approach
The inventory shows which pages earn visits and links, so content decisions are made with that data.
Challenge
Analytics tags or conversion events are missing on new templates.
Agnotic approach
We list every event before the redesign and check each one fires on staging and again after launch.
Challenge
New templates load more scripts and get slower.
Agnotic approach
Each template has a Core Web Vitals budget that is checked before launch.
Challenge
The staging noindex setting goes live with the new site.
Agnotic approach
The launch checklist removes staging blocks and checks robots rules and noindex tags on the live site within the hour.
Redirect map
What does a redirect map look like?
A sample of the map we build for every redesign. The real one lists every URL from the inventory.
| Old URL pattern | New URL | Status code | Check after launch |
|---|---|---|---|
| /services/web-design.html | /services/web-design | 301 | One hop only, and the new page returns 200 |
| /blog/2019/05/post-title | /blog/post-title | 301 by pattern rule | A sample of old URLs from server logs each lands on the matching post |
| /products?id=42 | /products/blue-widget | 301 by lookup table | Each ID maps to its own page, never to the home page |
| /old-campaign-page with no new equivalent | None | 404 or 410 | Internal links to it are removed or updated |
| http and non-www versions of every URL | https://www.example.com/... | 301 | Each version resolves in one hop, with no chains |
We test the full map on staging with an automated crawl before launch, and run it again against production on launch day.
Launch checklist
What is on our website redesign launch checklist?
The steps we follow from inventory to the weeks after launch.
Inventory every URL
Crawl the old site and add URLs from server logs, analytics landing pages and backlinks, so nothing earning traffic is missed.
Record the baseline
Landing page traffic, conversions, analytics events and Core Web Vitals field data before anything changes.
Build the redirect map
One-to-one permanent redirects to the closest new page, no chains, and an honest 404 or 410 where nothing matches.
Check the new templates
WCAG 2.2 AA, Core Web Vitals budgets, titles, canonical tags and structured data on every template.
Rehearse on staging
Run the redirect list, compare analytics events with the baseline and fix gaps before launch day.
Launch
Redirects go live with the site, the new XML sitemap is submitted, and the Change of Address tool is used if the domain changes.
Monitor
404s, crawl errors, Search Console indexing and conversions against the baseline, checked daily in the first weeks.
What does a website redesign project include?
The work behind a redesign that keeps what the old site earned.
Content and URL inventory
Every page with its traffic, links and conversions, and a keep, merge, rewrite or retire decision for each.
Information architecture
A new page structure and URL scheme, planned so the redirect map stays simple.
CMS migration
Content moved to the new CMS with formatting, images, authors and metadata intact.
Redirect engineering
Redirect rules at the server, CDN or framework level, tested by crawl before and after launch.
Analytics and conversion parity
Tags, events, goals and forms checked against the baseline, so reports stay comparable.
Accessibility and performance checks
WCAG 2.2 AA and Core Web Vitals checks on every new template before it goes live.
Redesign or iterate
Should you redesign the whole site or improve it in stages?
A full redesign carries the most risk. These are the signs that point one way or the other.
- Redesign when the CMS cannot be maintained or secured, or the brand has changed
- Redesign when the information architecture no longer matches what you sell
- Improve in stages when traffic and conversions are healthy and the problems sit in a few templates
- Improve in stages when the team cannot freeze content for a launch
- Either way, the inventory and baseline come first, so you can measure the effect
Who it is for
Who do we redesign websites for?
Organizations whose website already earns traffic and leads they cannot afford to lose.
B2B companies with years of content
Sites with hundreds of articles and service pages that bring in most new leads.
SaaS marketing sites
Product and pricing pages rebuilt for a new positioning without losing comparison and feature traffic.
Companies changing domain or CMS
Moves where every URL changes at once and the redirect map carries the whole risk.
Multi-location businesses
Location pages consolidated or restructured without losing local search visibility.
Website redesign for startups
Early sites outgrowing a template, rebuilt before the content library gets large.
Standards
Standards we redesign websites to
The guidelines behind the checklist and the redirect map.
WCAG 2.2 AACore Web VitalsHTTP 301 and 308XML sitemapsSchema.org
Facts and sources
Facts behind a website redesign
Search, performance and accessibility guidance that shapes a redesign, each linked to its source.
Google Search advises keeping site move redirects for as long as possible, generally at least one year, so Google can transfer signals to the new URLs.
Source: Site moves with URL changes (Google Search Central)Google Search recommends a permanent server-side redirect when a page's URL changes; the 301 and 308 status codes tell Google the page has permanently moved.
Source: Redirects and Google Search (Google Search Central)Good Core Web Vitals are a Largest Contentful Paint within 2.5 seconds, an Interaction to Next Paint of 200 milliseconds or less and a Cumulative Layout Shift of 0.1 or less, measured at the 75th percentile of page loads.
Source: Web Vitals (web.dev, Google)WCAG 2.2 extends WCAG 2.1 by adding new success criteria, so a site that conforms to WCAG 2.2 also conforms to WCAG 2.1.
Source: WCAG 2.2, W3C Recommendation 12 December 2024 (W3C)
Scope and cost
What drives the cost of a website redesign?
Redesigns are quoted from the inventory, not a package price. These factors move the quote most.
Number of pages
How many URLs the inventory finds, and how many need individual redirect decisions.
Templates
How many distinct page templates the new design needs.
CMS change
Whether content stays in your CMS or moves to a new one.
Content work
How many pages are rewritten, merged or retired rather than moved as they are.
Integrations
Forms, CRM, marketing automation and search tools that must keep working.
Languages
Translated versions of the site, each with its own URLs and redirects.
Frequently Asked Questions
Some movement is normal while search engines process the new URLs. Large, lasting drops usually come from missing or wrong redirects, dropped pages or slower templates, which is what the inventory, redirect map and checks are there to prevent.
Google advises keeping them for as long as possible, generally at least one year. We recommend keeping them indefinitely for URLs that have backlinks, since people may follow those links for years.
Not always. If your CMS is maintained and your editors are happy with it, we redesign within it. We recommend a move only when the CMS blocks security updates, performance or the content model you need.
We list every tag, event and goal before the redesign, rebuild them on the new templates with the same names, and compare staging and live data with the baseline so your reports carry on without a break.
It depends on the number of pages, templates and integrations and whether the CMS changes, so we agree the first release and the launch plan on the scoping call.
We quote from the URL inventory rather than a package. Page count, templates, a CMS move, content rewriting, integrations and languages make the biggest difference.
Yes. We can redesign one section or template at a time, with redirects and tracking checks for each release, which spreads the risk and lets you measure each change.