Your website exists. It just isn't working hard enough for you. Here's how to diagnose the problem, what doing nothing really costs, and how to redesign without losing your Google rankings.
of consumers won't trust a business whose website looks out of date
the extra cost of fixing SEO after a poorly prepared redesign, compared with building it in from the start
more quote requests after a redesign with a reworked conversion funnel
edana.ch 2025
the average lifespan of a website before its SEO and conversion performance start to slip
You have a website. It has been online for a few years. Technically, it works. And yet something isn't right.
Maybe enquiries have stopped coming from it. Maybe you searched for yourself on Google and couldn't find your business. Maybe a competitor who barely existed two years ago now outranks you on keywords that should be yours. Or maybe you simply opened your site on your phone and felt embarrassed to send the link to a prospect.
This guide is for you.
Redesigning a website is a different job from building one. If you're reading this, you're not wondering whether you need a website. You're wondering whether your current one is a problem, what it costs you to leave it as it is, and how to rebuild without losing what still works.
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There is no fixed age for a redesign. A 3-year-old site can need a full rebuild, while a 6-year-old site can still run well if its technical foundations hold up. What matters is what the numbers say.
Here are the 8 signals to watch. If you recognise more than three, you have your answer.
0 of 8 signals identified
A tool to use right now: pagespeed.web.dev. Enter your URL. If your mobile score is below 50, write it down. Below 30, the situation is urgent. A well-built site scores above 90.
Most business owners judge their website by what it cost to build. They look at the original invoice and conclude that as long as the site "runs", there's no problem. That's exactly the wrong way round.
The real question isn't "how much did my website cost?". It's "how much does it cost me every month that my website underperforms?".
A site with poor SEO or slow load times doesn't make it to the first page of Google for the searches that matter to you. In French-speaking Switzerland, 80% of consumers use a search engine to find a provider they don't already know. If you aren't visible at that moment, you don't exist for them.
This isn't theory. It's arithmetic. If "plumber Lausanne" gets 300 searches a month and you don't show up, you miss up to 100 qualified visitors every month. At a 5% conversion rate, that's 5 prospects going to a competitor. Month after month.
This one is often harder to admit, because the traffic is there but it doesn't convert. A visitor lands, sees a dated design or a confusing layout, can't find what they're looking for straight away, and leaves. They were qualified. They were ready to buy. Your website lost them.
A concrete example. A physiotherapy practice in Geneva gets 800 visitors a month. Current conversion rate: 1.5%, or 12 enquiries. After a redesign with a reworked user flow: 4%, or 32 enquiries. The difference: 20 potential new patients a month. At CHF 80 a session, that's CHF 1,600 in extra monthly revenue. Over a year: CHF 19,200. Cost of the redesign: CHF 4,500. Paid back in under 3 months.
Source: edana.ch 2025
Take your site's monthly visitors (you'll find them in Google Analytics). Multiply by your current conversion rate. Imagine that rate going from 2% to 5% after a redesign. Work out the difference over 12 months. Compare it with the cost of the redesign.
Estimate the return on your redesign
Adjust the values to match your situation. Your Google Analytics data will give you the exact figures.
Current leads / month
12
Leads after redesign / month
32
Extra annual revenue
36,000
CHF
Paid back in
2
months
3-year ROI
+2,060%
CHF 108,000 in extra revenue for an investment of CHF 5,000
Want to see the real numbers behind your current site?
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This is the first decision to make, before you talk budget or providers. And the answer isn't always "rebuild everything". Sometimes a targeted fix is enough. Sometimes it only delays the inevitable, at a higher cost.
A partial redesign makes sense when the foundations are solid. Your site runs on recent technology (up-to-date WordPress, Next.js, a recent Webflow build), its structure is logical, and the problems are isolated. In that case, the work is to rebuild the home page and service pages, optimise the Core Web Vitals, and rework the calls to action and meta tags. Typical budget: CHF 1,500 to CHF 3,500.
Your site runs on WordPress with plugins abandoned years ago. Its SEO structure has no logic (dozens of pages with no keyword strategy, URLs like /page?id=27). The theme is a generic template bought 6 years ago. In that situation, a partial fix will cost as much as a redesign and deliver less.
A full redesign is also the only option when the technology itself is the problem. A site built on a proprietary CMS from a provider who has since disappeared, a Flash site (yes, some are still out there), a site made with an obsolete page builder: there is no partial fix for any of these.
A simple rule to decide. If you fixed the 3 biggest problems on your current site, would you end up with a site you're proud of, one that really works for you? If yes, go for a partial redesign. If you're in doubt, rebuild. Paying twice is the real risk.
| Situation | Recommendation | Indicative budget |
|---|---|---|
| Recent site (under 3 years), sound technology, isolated issues | Partial redesign | CHF 1,500 to 3,500 |
| Site 3 to 5 years old, decent structure but dated design, SEO needs work | Partial to full | CHF 3,000 to 7,000 |
| Site over 5 years old, outdated or abandoned technology | Full redesign | CHF 4,000 to 12,000 |
| Outdated or non-compliant e-commerce site | Full redesign | CHF 8,000 to 30,000+ |
This is the most common mistake. A provider offers to "redo the design" and the client gets the same pages with new colours and a new font. The look has changed, but there are still no SEO foundations, the code is still heavy and the user flow is still confusing.
A real redesign is a strategic rebuild. It starts from your business goals, not from personal taste.
Which pages bring in traffic? Which keywords do you already rank for? Which pages convert best? This data is valuable and has to be preserved.
The new site's structure should be driven by your SEO strategy, not by a navigation menu from 2019. That's what separates a site that climbs on Google from one nobody sees.
Every visual choice (hierarchy, colours, buttons, forms) follows a conversion logic. Good looks build trust, but they have to serve the business goal.
A redesigned site should score above 90 on mobile PageSpeed. AVIF/WebP images, minified and deferred code, fast hosting. That's the baseline in 2026.
Every URL that changes needs a 301 redirect. Without it, you lose all the SEO authority you've built up. A thorough redirect plan is non-negotiable.
Privacy policy, cookie consent banner, legal notice. Not a last-minute add-on, but built into the structure from the planning stage.
It's the topic nobody raises in the redesign kick-off meeting, and the one everybody wishes they had raised 3 months later, when traffic has collapsed.
A poorly prepared redesign can cut your organic traffic by 40 to 70% within a few weeks. That's no exaggeration. It's what happens when URLs change without redirects, when content is rewritten without regard for the keywords that were working, or when the internal linking is rebuilt from scratch.
With vs without 301 redirects (index, base 100)
Export every page that receives organic traffic from Google Search Console. Even 10 visitors a month makes it a page worth protecting. Note the exact URLs, their positions and their traffic. This document is your map for the migration.
If a URL changes during the redesign, it needs a permanent (301) redirect. Without one, Google reads the missing page as deleted content and drops its ranking. Any backlinks pointing to the old URL are lost.
If some pages bring in traffic with their current copy, don't rewrite them from scratch. Improve them, expand them, but keep what works. Rewriting everything in one go hands Google a mass of unproven content to re-index.
Close monitoring: check in Search Console that the new pages are indexed, that the old URLs redirect correctly and that traffic isn't dropping. This is the window where problems can be fixed fast and damage kept to a minimum.
What to demand from your developer before a redesign starts. A documented 301 redirect plan. An audit of the current site that identifies the pages with SEO value. A Search Console monitoring period after launch. A rollback plan. If your developer has none of these planned, they haven't asked the right questions.
The price ranges you find elsewhere are either too broad to be useful or stretched to cover every possible case. Here's what I see on the market in French-speaking Switzerland in 2026.
The amount of content to migrate is often the biggest factor. A 5-page site and a 40-page site with an 80-article blog are not the same job. The state of the current site matters too: if the source code is out of reach or the technology is proprietary, the content has to be rebuilt from the public pages. The target technology can make the budget vary by a factor of 1 to 3.
| Type of redesign | Content | Freelancer | Agency | Timeline |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Partial redesign (priority pages) | 3 to 8 pages | CHF 1,500 to 3,500 | CHF 3,500 to 8,000 | 1 to 3 wks |
| Full business website redesign | 5 to 15 pages | CHF 3,500 to 8,000 | CHF 8,000 to 20,000 | 3 to 6 wks |
| SME website redesign with blog and advanced SEO | 15 to 40 pages | CHF 6,000 to 14,000 | CHF 12,000 to 35,000 | 5 to 10 wks |
| E-commerce redesign | Depends on catalogue | CHF 8,000 to 20,000 | CHF 20,000 to 80,000 | 8 to 16 wks |
It sounds counter-intuitive, but it's true. A redesign involves analysis work that a new build doesn't: an SEO audit, a content inventory, a redirect plan, a before and after comparison. And if the original technology is obsolete or the logins have been lost, every page has to be rebuilt from the public version of the site.
The upfront audit
CHF 500 to 1,500
The best investment in the whole project. Don't skip it.
SEO migration
CHF 300 to 500
It shouldn't be optional. It belongs in every redesign quote.
CMS training
Included
If you can't manage your new site, you're back to depending on someone else.
Want an accurate estimate for your redesign project?
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PageSpeed score, URL structure, pages indexed in Search Console, bounce rate per page, keywords you already rank for. We identify what works and must be kept. This is also where the redirect plan is drawn up.
Every later phase depends on this one
The new site architecture: which pages, which target keywords, which internal links. We decide whether to keep the same URLs or restructure.
Mock-ups designed in Figma, built around your positioning and conversion goals. The design is signed off before any development starts.
Building the design, migrating existing content, developing new features, technical SEO (tags, schema.org, XML sitemap) and performance optimisation.
Browser and device testing, checking every 301 redirect, a final Core Web Vitals audit, content proofreading and your sign-off.
Deployment, Search Console checks, then 4 weeks of traffic and ranking monitoring. If anything goes off track, I step in straight away.
The revised Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection (FADP) came into force in September 2023. If your site was built before then and hasn't been updated since, it is probably not compliant. A redesign is the ideal moment to put this right properly.
A privacy policy that can be reached from every page, stating what data is collected, why, how long it is kept and what rights users have.
If you use Google Analytics, advertising pixels or any third-party tracking tool, a cookie consent banner is mandatory. Not an information banner, but a system that blocks cookies until consent is given.
For online shops: terms and conditions of sale, the returns policy and VAT information must be clearly displayed.
Penalties for non-compliance can reach CHF 250,000. Many Swiss websites added a cookie banner after 2023 without checking that it actually blocks cookies before consent. A banner that only informs visitors is not compliant.
Can't find what you're looking for? Get in touch directly, I always reply within 24 hours.
Get in touchNot if the redesign is prepared properly. The two essential safeguards are a 301 redirect plan for every URL that changes, and keeping the content that already performs. A well-run redesign can even improve your rankings in the medium term. A redesign done without an audit, on the other hand, can cut traffic by 40 to 70%.
A partial redesign takes 2 to 4 weeks. A full redesign of an SME business website: 4 to 8 weeks. An online shop or a site with a lot of content to migrate: 8 to 16 weeks. The main variable is how quickly the client can sign off the key stages.
You can keep the copy that performs well in SEO, as long as it is migrated properly. Copy that isn't optimised or is out of date deserves a rewrite. In practice, we rewrite the key pages (home, services, about) and migrate or improve the rest.
Not necessarily. Staying on WordPress is a sound choice if the technology isn't the problem. Switching is only justified when the current technology holds you back (a proprietary CMS, performance you can't reach). For a PageSpeed score above 90 and maximum SEO performance, moving to Next.js can make sense.
An update covers content or surface elements. A redesign goes into the structure: site architecture, technology, design system, technical SEO, performance. If the changes require editing the underlying code, it's a redesign.
Not directly, but you need to make the transition easy. After launch, submit the new XML sitemap in Search Console. Check that all your important pages are indexed in the days that follow.
It's manageable. Run a WHOIS lookup to find your hosting provider. If you no longer have CMS access, the rebuild starts from the public version of the site. It takes longer, but it can be done. In any web contract, always insist on receiving full access at handover.
Insist on open technology (WordPress, Next.js) hosted with a provider you control. Maintain the site regularly. Have access to Search Console and Analytics from day one.
I review your site and tell you exactly what's holding it back. Performance, SEO, structure, data protection compliance. A clear, free audit, without a 40-slide presentation.
The areas I know best for building custom websites, interfaces and apps.