A redesign is a renovation of something that is already earning money. Your current site, however dated, may rank for searches, carry links from local organisations and receive calls every week. Rebuild it carelessly and that can disappear for months. We redesign service-firm websites with the same care your crews would give a house with tenants still living in it.
What it is and who it suits
Redesign and migration combines a new website with a planned move of everything valuable from the old one. The design and writing work matches our websites service. The extra work is forensic: finding what the old site is worth before anything is switched off.
It suits Oakville firms whose site is several years old, still brings in some enquiries, and has accumulated pages, reviews widgets, directory links and blog posts along the way. It also suits firms going through a rebrand, where the name, look and site are all changing together.
What's included
- Access audit. Confirm who controls the domain, hosting, analytics and search console accounts, and move them into your company's name if needed.
- Page inventory. Every address on the old site, with its traffic, inbound links and current rankings.
- Keep, merge, retire. A decision for every page, agreed with you.
- Redirect map. Each old address pointed to its new home, tested before launch.
- Content carry-over. Valuable text and photos moved and improved, not lost.
- Tracking continuity. Call tracking and analytics set up so before-and-after numbers are comparable.
- Launch checks. Redirects, titles, structured data, sitemap and phone numbers verified on launch day.
- Ninety days of monitoring. Weekly checks on rankings, errors and enquiries, with fixes as needed.
Timeline
| Weeks | Work |
|---|---|
| 1 | Access audit and page inventory |
| 2 | Keep, merge, retire decisions; redirect map draft |
| 3–7 | Copy, design and build of the new site |
| 8 | Pre-launch testing, redirect tests, launch |
| 9–20 | Monitoring and adjustments |
How results are measured
We compare like with like. Before launch we capture a baseline of organic visits, rankings for your key services in Oakville, and monthly calls, texts and emails. After launch we report against that baseline weekly for the first month and monthly after that. The goal is first to hold the line, then to improve on it as the stronger pages take effect.
Here is the arithmetic that makes the care worthwhile. If your old site brings 12 enquiries a month and you close a third at an average of $3,000, it is producing $12,000 of work monthly. A sloppy migration that halves enquiries for three months costs roughly $18,000 in lost jobs, which is far more than the work it takes to prevent it.
Mistakes to avoid
- Changing every address without redirects. The single most common cause of lost rankings.
- Deleting "old" pages that still earn. A 2019 post about a common repair can be your most-visited page.
- Switching phone numbers during launch. Change one thing at a time where you can. If the number must change, update your Google profile and listings the same day.
- Launching on a Friday. Nobody is around to fix problems. Launch early in the week.
- No baseline. Without before numbers, nobody can say whether the redesign worked.
What we need from you
A safe migration depends on access more than anything else. Before week one, try to locate the logins for your domain registrar, hosting, analytics and Google profile, and the name of whoever built the current site. If any of these are missing, tell us early; recovering access can take a couple of weeks, and it is far better to start that clock before design begins than to discover the problem on launch day.
Proof and next steps
Among the results from our HVAC work, Roma Heating & Cooling reached 400% organic traffic growth in 12 months, and CanroHeat.ca achieved 250% lead growth. More detail is on the results page. If your redesign is part of a rebrand, read our guide to rebranding without losing calls. As always, we are a branding and web service, not a contractor.
Frequently asked questions
Will our rankings drop after a redesign?
Some movement in the first few weeks is normal. A careful migration keeps it small and temporary. The big, lasting drops come from deleted pages, changed addresses without redirects and lost content, which is exactly what our process prevents.
Can we change our domain name at the same time?
You can, but it adds risk. If a new name is part of a rebrand, we usually recommend launching the new design on the old domain first, then moving domains once the new site is settled.
What happens to our old blog posts?
We sort them into keep, merge and retire. Posts that bring visitors or links are kept or merged into stronger pages. Retired posts are redirected to the closest relevant page, never simply deleted.
Our current developer controls the hosting. Is that a problem?
It can slow things down. Before we start, we help you get admin access to your domain, hosting and analytics in your company's name, which you should have regardless of who builds the next site.