Website redesign, done inside a week
Rebuilt from scratch
and nothing you have
earned is lost.
Most of the sites we rebuild were fine on the day they went live. Then the person who built it moved on, the photographs got heavy, phones took over, and one quiet month you notice the inquiries have thinned out.
Painting over the same pages doesn’t fix that, so we make the site again from nothing. Your words, your photographs, your reviews, your email and the search positions you spent years collecting all come across, every old address redirects to its new home, and the new site is live in seven days.
Moving you over isn’t charged for, and nothing goes live until you have seen it.
No website at all yet? Then this isn’t your page: having a small business website designed and built from scratch is the other half of what we do, at the same dollar and in the same seven days.
- Live in7 days
- The new site$1, was
$1,500 - Moving it overNo charge
- Hosting after that$8.99 a month
Today you pay $1 for the website plus your first month of hosting. After that hosting is $8.99 a month, billed on the same date each month until you cancel, and you can cancel in any month. Domain included on Complete, $18.99 a month. On Basic it’s billed at cost, about $12 a year.
Before and after
The same business, twice
Hartwood Millwork in Denver had a site a relative built for them in 2017. Same trade, same photographs, mostly the same words.
What changed is that it now finishes loading before anyone gives up on it, and that Google can read what is on it.
If you want the list before the sales pitch, what a website redesign should fix is it.
- No certificate, so browsers warn people off before they read a word
- One photograph, 4.1 MB, sent at full size to a phone
- Wider than the screen, so the whole page slides sideways under a thumb
- Certificate, nightly backup and a page that draws in about a second
- The same photographs, re-cut, at a fifth of the weight
- An inquiry form on every page and one inbox behind all of them
Measured the week before we started, and thirty days after it went live
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Time to load, on a phone on cell data
Was8.9s Now1.1sBars run 0 to 10 seconds. Lower is better.
Three seconds is roughly where a person on a phone stops waiting and goes back to the results. At nine seconds the visitor is looking at a blank screen with a thumb hovering over the back button, and what a slow website costs you puts a number on the ones who never come back.
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Google’s mobile page score, out of 100
Was34 Now96Bars run 0 to 100 points. Higher is better.
The same measurement your customer’s thumb takes, taken by the search engine that decides who to show. Speed is one of the things ranking is built on.
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Pages Google had indexed, of the 24 on the site
Was3 Now24Bars run 0 to 24 pages. Higher is better.
There were twenty-four pages on the old site and three were in the index. The rest had no title worth reading, nothing linking to them and no sitemap pointing at them, so as far as search was concerned they didn’t exist. Page titles and descriptions is the shortest explanation of why that happens.
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Inquiries through the site, per month
Was3 Now14Bars run 0 to 20 a month. Higher is better.
The only figure that gets banked. A short form on every page, an obvious next step at the bottom of every page, and every inquiry landing in one inbox rather than three. Why nobody fills in your booking form covers the rest of the reasons a form sits untouched.
One business, not a promise. The first three rows are engineering and we’ll do the same on any site we take on. The fourth depends on what you do for a living and how many people near you want it, which is why we cover when a rebuild isn’t worth it further down.
Where you are now
Whatever your old website
was built on
You don’t need to know what your website runs on, and we aren’t fussy about it. Send us the address and we work the rest out ourselves. Six situations cover almost everybody who writes in.
| What you have now | What we do with it |
|---|---|
| A builder platform | Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy, Weebly and the rest. Some export cleanly and some don’t, and where they don’t we copy the pages, the photographs, the products and the reviews across by hand. Keep paying them until the new site is live and answering, then cancel. Never the other way around. |
| WordPress | Usually the easiest to take on, and usually the one carrying eleven plugins nobody has updated since 2019. The words, the images, the page addresses and the blog posts come across. The plugins don’t, because the thing we build them on doesn’t need them. |
| Built by a relative | Hand-written pages, an old theme, or a builder nobody sells anymore. If it’s on the internet we can read it, so we don’t need a password to copy what is on it. Getting the domain back into your own name is usually the longer job, and we do that part for you. |
| A directory listing | The page your trade association or a local directory gives you is theirs, not yours, and it disappears the day you stop paying them. We build the same content on a domain registered in your own name and leave the listing pointing at it, so the two work together instead of competing. |
| A Facebook page and nothing else | Then this is a first build, and the posts and photographs you already have are a better starting point than most people bring. Whether you need a website when you have Facebook and Instagram is the place to start, including the cases where you don’t. |
One thing we won’t take on: custom software. A members’ area, an inventory system wired into the register, a booking engine your trade association supplies. We build business websites and stores, and rewriting someone’s software would cost you far more than leaving it where it is. The section further down sets out the other three cases where we tell you to keep your money.
What you get
Eight things a website redesign changes
Every one of these is something a visitor or a search engine can feel, and every one of them is measurable the week after.
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01
A second, not nine
Photographs re-cut and compressed rather than uploaded straight off a camera. Code kept small. Nothing loading five tracking scripts before the first word appears. The whole thing served from a network with a copy near whoever is asking.
It’s the least glamorous work we do and it’s the change people notice first: the page is there when they arrive. Eight seconds saved on every visit, every day, from people who were never going to wait.
What the hosting does -
02
Found on Google
A title on every page that says what the page is and which town it’s in. One heading per page, in order. Structured data so your hours, your prices and your reviews can show inside the result itself. A sitemap listing every page, submitted the day you go live.
And a Google Business Profile that matches the site to the letter, because when they disagree the search engine believes neither. How long it takes to reach the first page of Google is written for exactly this moment.
How local search works -
03
Visits that turn into inquiries
Traffic that never asks you for anything is a hobby. A short form people finish - five fields, not fifteen - one obvious next step at the end of every page, and a booking calendar customers can book themselves into at eleven at night. Everything lands in one inbox, so nothing is lost between a form, a message and a note on the counter.
Bookings and reminders -
04
Built for a thumb
Most of your visitors are one hand on a phone, on a bus, in daylight - which is the whole argument in what your site looks like on a bus. Type big enough to read without pinching, buttons big enough to hit, a menu that opens and closes, contrast that survives sunshine, and nothing that slides sideways. We check every page at three widths, the narrowest of them 360 pixels, and a page that overflows doesn’t ship.
How a site gets built here -
05
Secure, and backed up nightly
An SSL certificate, renewed by us for as long as you are here, so nobody is warned away from your own front door. A backup taken every night and kept, so a bad afternoon costs you an hour rather than a business. And no plugin sitting there unpatched since 2019, because the thing the old site was built on isn’t coming with you.
Uptime and backups, in writing -
06
One supplier, one bill
Right now the domain is probably with one company, the mailbox with another, the site with a third and the invoicing on a spreadsheet.
Here the mailbox, the SSL, the backups, the invoices, the bookings and the live chat are all on one account and inside one hosting bill. Not one of them is charged on top of it.
Your domain sits on that same account, registered in your name, with the DNS and the renewals run by us. The registry’s own annual fee for the name is the single line billed separately at cost.
Nothing to wire together, and nothing that stops working because a renewal was missed at a company you had forgotten about.
Email on your own name -
07
Nothing left behind
Your words, your photographs, your reviews, your products, your rankings and your email all come across, and every address the old site had redirects permanently to whatever replaced it. That last part is the difference between keeping the search positions you have earned and starting from nothing on the day you launch.
The full list of what moves -
08
You keep control of it
New prices, new hours, a new photograph, a Christmas notice: change them yourself from any browser in a few clicks, with nothing technical to learn. Or send the change to us and our team makes it, two a month on Basic and as many as you send on Complete. No waiting two weeks for someone who has moved to Australia, and no password only one person has.
Guides for doing it yourself
Nothing lost
What comes across with you
The fear is losing the twelve years of reviews, the address everyone has, and the four pages that do turn up on Google. All of it moves, and the moving isn’t charged for. Here’s the week it moves in.
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Your words
Copied across in full, then kept where they are doing their job and rewritten where they aren’t. Nothing is thrown away without you seeing it first, and the page you wrote yourself at midnight in 2019 stays if you want it to.
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Your photographs
The same pictures, re-cut and compressed, arriving at about a fifth of the weight. Where one is too small or too dark to use we say so and find a better one rather than stretching it, and how many photographs a site needs is fewer than you are imagining.
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Your reviews
The Google ones live on your Business Profile, which is yours and stays yours. We put them on the new site, tag them so search engines can read them, and make sure the profile and the site say the same hours and the same services.
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Your rankings
Every address the old site had gets a permanent redirect to the page that replaced it, written by hand, one line at a time. Titles and headings that are already earning their keep are carried over rather than reinvented. This is the part we take most seriously.
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Your email
The same address, with the folders and the history intact. Mailboxes are copied and already receiving before anything is pointed anywhere, so mail keeps arriving through the change. How the mailboxes work, and why an address on your own name changes the reply rate.
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Your domain
Transfer it to us and it stays registered in your name, with the DNS and the renewals run for you as part of the service and the registry’s own annual fee for the name billed separately at cost, or leave it exactly where it is and we change two records. Either way it’s yours, and it’s yours to take away. How domains work here.
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Your files
Certificates, price lists, brochures and terms that people download from the old site keep working at the same addresses, so the link in someone’s saved email doesn’t break.
The migration
Seven days, and not a minute of it dark
The site you have now stays up, exactly as it is, for the whole week. The new one is built alongside it where only you can see it. They cross over once, early on the last morning, and the old one is left running behind the change for another day in case someone’s network is slow to notice.
The site you have now The one we’re building
The two lines running down the left of the days show which site is answering on your address. The gray line, the site you have now, runs from day one until a day after the switch. The blue line, the site we’re building, starts on day two, is visible only to you until day six, and takes over at seven in the morning on day seven.
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Day 1
You tell us what is there
A questionnaire, fifteen minutes: what the business does, what you want more of, where the site is now, who holds the domain and where the mailboxes are. Nothing changes on your side today, and nothing changes on your side tomorrow either.
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Day 2
We take a copy of everything
Every page, every photograph, every product, every review, and a list of every address search engines currently hold for you. We also drop the time-to-live on your DNS to five minutes. It’s the dullest thing in the week and it’s why day seven takes minutes instead of two days.
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Day 3
Design, drawn around the trade
Drawn from what the old site was trying to do and what it never got around to doing. The parts that were working keep their place, and the ones people scrolled past are replaced by the thing they were looking for instead: a price list, a gallery, a booking button, a menu. You aren’t asked to pick a template or choose a font.
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Day 4
The words
Our writers work from your old copy and your questionnaire together. What is already good is kept and given a proper heading; what was written to fill a space is replaced with what someone wants to know before they get in touch.
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Day 5
Build, and the redirect map
The pages get built, and beside them a table with one line for every old address and the new page it points at. Nothing is guessed and nothing is sent to the home page as a shortcut, because a redirect to the wrong page is the same as a dead one to a search engine.
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Day 6
You look at it
A private preview link arrives by email. Both sites exist at this point and the public still sees the old one. Ask for changes in writing and we make them the same business day.
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Day 77am
The domain moves, before the day starts
Seven in the morning, when nobody is looking. Four things make it uneventful:
- The mailboxes moved first. They were copied days ago and are already receiving, so mail keeps arriving at the same address throughout.
- The five-minute setting from day 2. The change spreads across the internet in minutes rather than the day and a half it takes from a standing start.
- The redirects are live from the first second. Anyone arriving on an old address lands on the page that replaced it, not on an error.
- The old site keeps running for 24 hours. Whoever’s network is slow to catch up still sees a working site.
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After
The month that follows
The sitemap goes in the day you go live and we watch the index for the first month, because positions usually shake by a place or two before they settle. Edits are unlimited for the first thirty days. A copy of the old site is kept for thirty days too, in case there’s something on it you remember late. After that, measuring what works without drowning in analytics is the short version of what to watch and what to ignore.
When not to rebuild
When a website redesign isn’t worth it
We’d rather say so on the first day than take a dollar off you and rebuild something that was already working. Four cases where we will tell you to keep your money.
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Leave it
It’s under two years old, it loads in about a second on a phone, and inquiries are coming in. Then it’s doing its job and a new coat of paint won’t add a single customer. Move the hosting to us if the bill is silly, or don’t. Either is fine.
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Wait
You paid someone good money for it a few months ago. Give it a full season and measure it before you replace it. A site that hasn’t been indexed yet is just new.
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Not the site
The site is fine and nobody knows the business exists. That’s a being-found problem, and the money is better spent on local search than on new pages nobody reaches. Start there instead, and read what to do when a competitor outranks you before you spend anything at all.
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Not us
It runs something custom: a members’ area, an inventory system wired into the register, a booking engine your trade association supplies. We build business websites and stores. We don’t rewrite custom software, and saying otherwise would cost you far more than leaving it where it is.
The cost
The new site is $1.
Hosting is billed monthly.
The rebuild, once
A website redesign is priced exactly like a new build here, because it’s one. A build of this size is normally $1,500, which sits at the modest end of what a website costs, and you pay a dollar for it.
Carrying your content, your mailboxes, your domain and your redirects across is part of the job and isn’t charged for separately.
The monthly, which is hosting
After that there’s one monthly bill, and it’s for hosting rather than for the website. The website was a dollar, and every site on the internet has to sit on a server somewhere, which you are paying someone for today.
Ours carries a mailbox, the SSL certificate, nightly backups, the software updates, your domain run for you and a person who makes your changes for you. Carrying all of that doesn’t make it a bigger bill, and the registry’s own annual fee for the domain name is the one line that sits outside it.
If you’re on a builder platform now, you are already handing over more than this every month for a site you built yourself.
Card payments through Stripe. No contract, no notice period, no exit fee, and no jump in price at the end of a first year. Anything you want added later - invoicing, bookings or a store - goes on the hosting alongside the rest and never makes the website itself pricier.
Not sure it’s worth doing? Send us what you have on chat or by email and we’ll tell you which of the four cases above you’re in.
- The rebuild$1 once
- Moving your content overIncluded
- Redirects from every old addressIncluded
- Moving your mailboxesIncluded
- Moving or pointing your domainIncluded
- Unlimited edits for 30 daysIncluded
- Hosting, from the day you order$8.99 a month
- The registry’s own fee for the domain nameBilled separately, at cost
- CancelingAny month, no fee
Questions
What people ask before they move
Anything not answered here, ask us on live chat or by email. A person who knows your site answers, usually in minutes.
Ways to reach usHow do I know my website needs redesigning?
Three checks, five minutes, and you don’t have to ask anyone.
- Open the site on a phone, on cell data. Count until the first words appear. Three seconds is roughly where people give up.
- Search for what you do and the town you do it in. Look for yourself in the map results and in the ordinary ones.
- Send yourself an inquiry through your own form. See whether it arrives, and how long it takes.
Three passes and keep your money. Two fails and a website redesign will pay for itself before the quarter is out.
How much does a website redesign cost?
$1, once, against a build that’s normally $1,500.
A rebuild is priced exactly like a new build here, because it’s one. Carrying your content, your mailboxes, your domain and your redirects across is part of the job rather than a line on an invoice.
Hosting is paid monthly from the day you order, which is what keeps any website on the internet and what you are paying someone for already.
Moving the name across costs nothing. The registry’s own annual fee for it, about $12 a year for a .com, is billed separately at cost and isn’t part of the monthly.
No contract, no notice period, no exit fee, and no jump in price at the end of a first year.
How long does a website redesign take?
Seven days from the questionnaire, and about fifteen minutes of that is yours.
Days two to five are ours: a copy of everything you have, the design, the words and the redirect map. Day six you look at a private preview and ask for changes. Day seven, at seven in the morning, the domain moves.
The site you have now stays up and working for the whole week and for a day after the change, so there’s no window where a customer finds nothing.
Will I lose the Google rankings I have?
No, and this is the part of the job we’re most careful about.
Before anything moves we take the list of every address search engines hold for you, and every one of them gets a permanent redirect to the page that replaced it. Titles and headings that are already earning their keep are carried over as they are.
The sitemap goes in the day you go live and we watch the index for the first month. Positions typically wobble by a place or two in the first two weeks and settle back.
What loses rankings is a rebuild with no redirect map, which is exactly the thing we spend day five on.
What happens to my email on the day it switches?
Nothing you’ll notice. Your address doesn’t change. The mailboxes are copied across with the folders and the history intact and are already receiving before the domain is pointed anywhere, so during the changeover mail is being caught on both sides. Your only part is signing in once on your phone and your computer.
My site is on a builder platform I pay monthly for. Can I get my content out?
Yes. Some platforms export cleanly and some don’t; where they don’t, we copy the pages, the text, the images, the products and the reviews by hand. It’s our time, not yours, and it isn’t charged for. Keep paying the old platform until the new site is live and answering, then cancel it. Never the other way around.
Do I have to move my domain to you?
No. Two options, and both work.
Transfer it to us. It stays registered in your name, we run the DNS and handle the renewal for you as part of the service, and you stop getting the letters. The registry’s own annual fee for the name is billed separately at cost and isn’t part of the monthly.
Or leave it exactly where it is. We tell you the two records to change, or change them for you if you give us access.
Either way the domain is yours, and it’s yours to take away whenever you like.
My old site has sixty pages. What happens to them?
Most sites that size have ten pages doing the work and fifty that were added once and never looked at again.
We rebuild the ones that earn their place, merge the thin ones into a page that’s useful, and redirect every old address to whichever page replaced it, so nothing 404s and nothing is orphaned.
The five pages every small business website needs is a fair guide to which ten those usually are. If all sixty do earn their place, say so and we’ll price it before you pay anything at all.
What if I don’t like the new one?
Tell us and we change it, as many times as it takes for the first thirty days. Nothing is switched over until you have seen it and said yes, so the site you have now is still there the whole time you’re deciding, and if you’d rather stop before the switch the dollar comes back in full, for any reason or none. We’d rather rebuild it than have you pay for something you aren’t proud of.
Who owns the new site afterwards?
You do. The domain is on the register in your name, the words and the photographs are yours, and the inquiries and customer data are yours. Ask for your files at any time and we send them. There’s no exit fee and no notice period, and nobody will try to talk you out of leaving.