In brief

Many companies redesign their website later than they should. Not because nobody noticed — because the early signs don’t look like design problems. They look like marketing problems, sales problems, or “maybe our prices are wrong” problems.

Sign 1: Why do people visit and then leave without doing anything?

Traffic is not the goal. Action is. If your visitor numbers are stable or growing but enquiries, calls, and sign-ups are flat, the site is leaking exactly the people your marketing paid to bring in.

A website that gets traffic but no enquiries isn’t a marketing problem — it’s usually a design problem wearing a marketing costume. The common mechanisms are unglamorous: the next step isn’t obvious on the page, the page loads slowly enough that people bail, or the contact form asks for too much too early. None of these require a taste debate. They’re measurable, and they’re fixable.

The leak in numbers
Monthly visitors +34%
Enquiries +2%
When visitors grow by a third and enquiries barely move, the share of visitors who enquire is falling. That points to the conversion engine, not the traffic source.
Illustrative example, not client data.

Sign 2: Is your mobile experience an afterthought?

For many B2B companies, the first visit now happens on a phone — someone taps a link from LinkedIn or a WhatsApp forward between meetings. If that first visit involves pinch-zooming, waiting on heavy images, or fighting a form built for a mouse, you’ve lost a visitor your content already earned.

The test costs nothing: open your own site on your phone, on mobile data, and try to complete an enquiry in under a minute. If you can’t, your prospects aren’t trying twice.

Sign 3: Does the site describe the company you used to be?

Businesses change faster than their websites. Services get added, positioning sharpens, new markets open — and the site quietly fossilises, because every update needs a developer and nobody has the time. A prospect who hears one story in a meeting and reads a different one on your site doesn’t conclude the website is outdated. They conclude the company is unclear about what it does.

Checklist

Does your website show the three signs?

Ten checks drawn from the three signs in this article. Tick the ones your site already passes.

Tick what your website already has. Your answers stay on this page; nothing is sent or stored.

Sign 1: people visit and leave
Sign 2: the mobile experience
Sign 3: the company you are now

10 items, 7 of them essential. Tick the ones your website already has.

Get a review of the gaps

Is it a redesign or a fix?

Not every sign demands a full rebuild. The sequence we’d suggest:

  • Audit against the three signs above — with numbers, not opinions.
  • Rank what you find by revenue impact, not by how visible it is internally.
  • Fix targeted problems if the foundation is sound; rebuild only when the foundation itself is the problem.

FAQ

How often should a company redesign its website?

There’s no fixed cycle. The honest answer: when the site stops matching the business or stops converting — not when a calendar says so. Some sites earn five years; some are wrong at launch.

What’s the difference between a redesign and a refresh?

A refresh changes the surface — visuals, copy, imagery — on the same foundation. A redesign rethinks structure: what pages exist, what each one is for, and what action it drives.