Website redesign: how to keep your traffic and enquiries

Key points

• Keep the pages that answer relevant searches.
• Map every changed URL to a matching destination.
• Check the enquiries you receive, not only the new look.

When it makes sense to redesign your company website

You have changed your services, you have new projects and bigger clients, but the website still describes the company you were a few years ago. Visitors see an incomplete offer, and your team sends separate presentations to fill the gaps. That is a commercial reason to redesign, even if the site still loads.

Separate an image problem from a technical one. Sometimes new copy, updated projects and clearer navigation are enough. A full rebuild makes sense when the structure or technology blocks the changes you need. Ask for a diagnosis before you approve replacing the whole site.

What to inventory before the first change

Export your existing URLs and check in Search Console which pages receive clicks from search. Compare them with the enquiries and sales your company tracks. A page with few visits can bring in more valuable requests than a popular article.

For each page, decide whether it stays, gets rewritten, is merged with another page or is removed. Write down the new destination before launch. Do not send every old URL to the homepage automatically: someone looking for a specific service should land on that service.

• Service pages and articles that bring in enquiries.
• URLs used in ads, emails and external profiles.
• Downloadable documents and images that other sites link to.
• Forms, confirmations and the path an enquiry takes to your team.

How to protect search traffic when URLs change

For a permanent move, use permanent redirects to the equivalent page. Check every important URL separately and avoid chains of several redirects. Update internal links, canonical URLs and the sitemap so they point directly to the final destinations.

Keep the information that explained the service and answered customers' questions. A new design with much less content can lose relevance. If you also change the domain, treat the move as a separate project, with property verification and monitoring of both versions.

What has to work on launch day

Send a request through every form and check that it reaches the right person. Check phone links, error messages, documents and the pages used in campaigns. The confirmation a visitor sees does not prove on its own that your team received the request.

Keep a copy of the old version and a rollback plan. Decide who makes the call to roll back and in which situations: enquiries that are not saved, sales pages that are unavailable or errors in integrations. The change should be something you can verify, not just something announced as done.

How to evaluate the result after the redesign

Compare similar periods and account for seasonality, campaigns and changes to your offer. Track the important pages, clicks from search, enquiries received and qualified requests. More traffic without useful enquiries does not meet the commercial goal.

For Fan Telecom Technology, Webmate separated the telecommunications offer from renewable energy and placed projects and certifications along the visitor's path. The example shows what a structure built around the offer looks like. It is not a promise of SEO rankings for every redesign.

What to prepare for the conversation with an agency

Bring the site address, a list of your current services, the pages that matter and examples of enquiries you have received. Say what no longer reflects the company and what must be kept. Ask for a proposal that separates content, design, migration and testing work.

At Webmate, we can start from these pages and from the path an enquiry takes to your team. The first output of the analysis is a concrete decision: what we rebuild, what we keep and which risk must be controlled before launch.

Frequently asked questions