Your website isn’t just a page of information, it’s your 24/7 sales tool. If it’s outdated, slow or hard to navigate you’re missing out on a ton of sales and ultimately business growth! If you’ve been struggling to attract new leads/drive more conversions, it’s time to consider a website redesign.
Today’s business world is more competitive than ever, and your brand isn’t the only one trying to grab your audience’s attention. A modern website helps you stand out and position yourself as a leader in your industry.
Despite what you might think, a redesign isn’t just about looks, there’s actually quite a bit you need to consider. Things like the functionality, speed, user experience (UX), and implementation of SEO practices all play a role in having an updated, impressive website.
At Mintun Media, it’s our business to know websites and what makes them convert. We want to help your business keep growing this year which is why we provided this guide to help you get started.
In this guide we’re going to tackle the topic of how to know if your website is overdue for a redesign or if it just needs a simple refresh. We also provide the exact steps you should take to executing your redesign as well as mistakes you should avoid during the process. This knowledge is going to help you improve your online presence and drive more revenue.
How to Know If Your Website Needs a Redesign
According to Forbes, the average lifespan of a website is 2 years and 7 months.
This means that if you haven’t updated yours in awhile, you could already be falling behind competitors and losing traffic. However, it’s important to note that these numbers are just a general guideline, not a strict expiration date.
Either way, let’s make sure you stay ahead of the game. When it comes to recognizing if your website is in need of a full redesign or just a quick refresh (we’ll get into the difference later), there are a few major signs you can look for that will tell you what exactly is needed.
Signs It’s Time For A Redesign
Poor Performance
If your website takes longer than 3 seconds to load, almost half of your visitors are going to leave.
Consumers want a fast, seamless experience when they visit your website. Things such as poorly written code and too many large images affect your site’s performance and will cause it to lag, drawing away visitors.
Tool Suggestion: Use Google’s PageSpeed Insights (Chrome extension) to analyze speed issues and find how you can improve.
Declining Traffic and Conversions
If you’ve noticed a drop in organic traffic and lead generation, this could mean your site is outdated or not user-friendly.
Tool Suggestion: You should regularly be looking at Google Analytics for trends and metrics about your traffic sources, bounce rate, user behavior, and conversion rates to identify problem areas.
Outdated Design and Branding
The fact is, trends are always changing, and what looks good evolves with them. While you don’t have to make major changes to things like your logo, colors, or typography, you can update your site to use them in a more modern way. We’ll talk more about 2025 trending designs in a second.
Navigation and Usability Issues
If people visit your site and struggle to navigate or find what they need, they’ll bounce and take their business elsewhere. Your website should always have intuitive navigation and clear user paths to keep visitors smoothly moving towards converting.
A huge part of effective usability and navigation in 2025 is mobile optimization. With 80% of potential customers primarily browsing on mobile, your site must be fast, responsive, and easy to use on any device. If it’s cluttered and difficult to navigate on a phone, you’re missing out on possible leads.
Continual Failure To Meet Business Objectives
If you’ve been struggling to increase sales, retain members, or book more services, your website could be the culprit.
Whatever your business goals are, your website should be designed to support and drive those objectives. For example, if your focus is booking more services, every page, button, and call-to-action (CTA) should be placed to guide visitors toward scheduling an appointment. If your goal is boosting sales, your site should have clear product pages, seamless checkout processes, and persuasive messaging.
A website that isn’t aligned with your goals is working against you. If it’s not generating results, it’s time to reevaluate.
Redesign Vs Refresh: What’s The Difference?
If you read through the above and don’t feel like a complete overhaul is necessary but it still feels like something is off or old about your site, a simple refresh could be all that’s necessary.
A site refresh is when you make minor cosmetic changes or maintenance updates to your website. The core structure and main functionalities remain basically the same and you just apply minor changes.
A site redesign is a massive overhaul. You refresh both the code and the visual appearance of your website significantly.
The Website Redesign Process: A Step-by-Step Guide
We’ll be honest, a redesign can be a huge success OR it could fail terribly.
It is a daunting task to take on a website redesign. It’s a big project that, when done right, has big results. Along the same lines if you approach it in the wrong way it could have a low ROI and not end up driving the results or growth that you were hoping for.
We don’t want this to happen. Follow these steps to help make sure your redesign is approached and executed successfully.
1. Define Your Goals & Strategy
Before just diving in, take a second to think about the core purpose of your website. What action are you trying to lead visitors towards? Is it booking a consultation, joining an eLearning community? Following your social media? Generating more leads?
Your business plan and metrics you wish to improve should lead this redesign process for you. Once you have those goals defined, set measurable KPIs (i.e. lower bounce rate, higher conversion rate, monthly membership engagement) to track your progress.
With a clear direction and data-backed goals, your process will be much more strategic and effective in the long-term.
2. Conduct a Website Audit
To help you find exactly what aspects of your website you can improve, you need to conduct a website audit.
There are two different types of audits you can run, both will provide beneficial information you can use to keep your efforts and work focused so you don’t waste time trying to fix what isn’t broken.
- A technical audit: This type assesses missed SEO opportunities, security, speed, mobile responsiveness, broken links, and other technical aspects that could be hurting your site.
- A design audit: This is focused on visual elements. This audit includes identifying any branding inconsistencies as well as user accessibility.
Tool: Hubspot Website Grader Gives an overview of your existing websites strengths and weaknesses.
3. Research & Plan Your New Design
“ I strive for two things in design: simplicity and clarity. Great design is born of those two things.”
-Lindon Leader
As you’re planning your new design, the first thing you should consider is what will appeal to your target audience.
You want to find what design aspects they prefer. Do they like bright, bold color palettes? Or are they looking for more conservative colors that convey professionalism. Do they engage with interactive elements or do they want a quick and to-the-point layout?
Knowing these preferences will help you build a website that not only looks great, but also makes it more likely for your potential customers to engage.
Other steps to formulating the visual part of your redesign:
- Research what competitors are doing
- Visualize your concept and layout
- How will you communicate your brand identity?
- What aspects will you include to prioritize user experience?
- How will you incorporate interactive elements that encourage engagement?
Important: You should always design your website with scalability in mind, basically you want your website to easily grow as you do.
At Mintun Media, we favor using Laravel when designing and building websites because it’s a powerful, flexible framework that makes adding new features, integrations, and functionalities seamless as your business grows.
4. Wireframing
Think of this step as building out the blueprint for your website.
Wireframing includes setting up the skeletal structure of your website. You want to lay out where key elements like navigation menus, media, content, and calls-to-action will go. This helps ensure that everything is set up to be intuitive for the user and well-organized.
Tip: Sketch out a user flow before diving into development. As you’ll see in the image above, this map outlines how users interact with your site and helps identify potential friction points that may prevent them from converting. You’ll be able to “walk a mile in their shoes” and define key interactions where users may drop off, need clearer navigation, or require additional prompts to take action.
5. Development & Testing
Once you’ve got your plan, it’s time to start building. Hand over your goals, objectives and vision over to development experts and let the magic happen.
An important part of this phase is ensuring you choose the right content management system (CMS) to build your site. If you’re looking for a simple website that’s main purpose is to deliver content, WordPress is a great option. If you want an all encompassing, ecommerce AND marketing powerhouse WooCommerce is our recommendation!
If the focus of your site is solely ecommerce with little to no marketing strategy, Shopify makes things extremely simple to sell products online. If you’re looking to sell products and implement marketing funnels then our recommendation is WooCommerce. It gives you more control over customization and has a lot more capabilities.
Before launch, test test and test again. Use a staging site to make sure everything works how you want it to. Double checking everything will save you time in the long run because it will help eliminate any potential issues your visitors may run into and complain about.
6. SEO & Performance Optimization
What’s the point of having a great website if it’s not even visible? SEO is HUGE for making sure when your audience turns to the web looking for answers to their problems, your brand shows up as a solution. The following practices will help make sure your brand appears at the top of their search results.
SEO Best Practices Include:
- Writing meta descriptions for each page
- Using high ranking keywords
- Use simple language in your content
- Stick to short sentences and paragraphs
- Structure your content with headings
- Break up text with media and bullet points
- Use short, descriptive URLs
7. Launch & Monitor Performance
It’s easy to think all of the work is done after a huge launch, but in reality, this is just the beginning. A successful website isn’t static. It requires continuous monitoring, optimization, and adjustments based on real user data.
This is good news for you because it means that whatever your stats initially are, you can only keep improving them to be better. Tools like Google Search Console and Google Analytics allow you to monitor traffic patterns, user engagement, and conversion rates, giving you valuable insights into what’s working and what you can improve.
Web Design Trends for 2025
Trends are always important to consider when redesigning your website. They tell you what consumers are looking for and what appeals to them as professional and credible. Plus, because technology is always evolving, they allow you to see what’s new and what you can implement. Here’s what is trending in 2025:
Minimalist interfaces with bold typography: Simple layouts with clear fonts for readability.
- AI-powered personalization: 45% of consumers in the U.S. say they appreciate that chatbots answer their questions immediately.
- Accessibility-first design: Ensures all users, including those with disabilities, can navigate and interact with your site easily through screen reader compatibility, keyboard navigation, and clear visuals.
- Dark mode & high-contrast UI: Dark mode doesn’t just look awesome but it actually offers better text visibility (it’s a win-win concept).
- Interactive elements: Micro-animations, hover effects, and engaging visuals to boost engagement (who doesn’t love fun cursors?)
- Effective Colors: How you use colors on your website redesign also affects your users experience. You can read more about effective website coloring here.
At the end of the day, yes you should always consider trends. However just as we mentioned before, incorporating elements that appeal to your target clientele is priority #1!
If you’re trying to appeal to an older generation, then large text and accessibility first is key. If you’re going for a more millennial or Gen Z audience, modern, bold visuals, interactive elements, and mobile-first design should be your focus.
Examples Of A Successful Redesign: LakeScape
Check out one of our clients who recently underwent a successful rebrand and website redesign with us.
LakeScape (previously known as Lake Martin Dock Company) wanted to elevate their brand from a small, community-focused marine construction company to a high-end, all-inclusive property transformation service that screams luxury, exclusivity, and premier craftsmanship.
Notice how the difference in design visually communicates this upgrade. While the old site provided the necessary information for their audience, they knew it needed more of the experience throughout the site. The new one is sleek, refined, and built to keep and attract high-end clientele. The transformation isn’t just about looks. It’s about positioning their brand for premium customers and bigger projects.
What Do You Do If You Don’t Have A Development Team?
Investing in a reliable, experienced team that knows how to plan, design, and build a high-performing website is one of the smartest moves you can make in 2025. No matter what industry you’re in, a well-optimized website gives you a competitive edge, builds trust with your audience, and turns visitors into loyal customers.
At Mintun Media, our team brings over 15 years of combined experience in web development, UX design, and conversion optimization. When you partner with us, you can trust that you’re working with a team that will fight for your business.
Schedule a free consultation today, and we’ll conduct a comprehensive website audit to identify what’s working, what’s holding you back, and if you need a website redesign. Let’s build something great together!
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