Site Redesign vs. Site Migration: Which Should You Choose?

Nothing can hurt your brand’s look more than an outdated website. Not only will its unappealing design probably scare some potential customers away, but the clunky UI will likely make your site nearly impossible for the ones who remain after that.

If it’s time for your company to update its website, you have two options: a site redesign and a site migration. In this post, we’ll cover each option for you, helping you decide which you should choose between a site redesign and a site migration.

Site Redesign

If you haven’t updated your website since you first launched it, a redesign might be the direction you need to look in. This usually involves rebuilding it from the ground up. A redesign comes with a whole list of positives and negatives, which we’ll cover for you here.

A Fresh, Appealing Look

One of the primary perks of a site redesign is the opportunity to revamp your website’s aesthetic, making it fresh, modern, and appealing. With a visually appealing website, you’re more likely to engage your audience, as an outdated website often creates a feeling of mistrust among users.

Enhanced User Experience

A site redesign allows you to rethink how your users interact with your website and optimize their experience. By improving navigation, speed, mobile compatibility, and accessibility, you can attract and retain more users, ultimately benefiting your website’s long-term success.

Stay Ahead of the Competition

A redesigned website allows you to seize the opportunity to evaluate your competitors, assess their strengths and weaknesses, and incorporate the latest web design trends. By staying ahead of the curve, you not only keep your audience engaged but also surpass your competitors in online presence, making your brand more successful.

Time-Consuming and Costly

One major drawback of a site redesign is the significant amount of time and financial resources it often requires. The redesign process may last several weeks or months, diverting your team’s attention and budget away from other essential business operations. This may strain smaller businesses or those that already have tight budgets.

Risk of Losing Customers

If your website has a considerable departure from its original design, you risk alienating frequent users, leading to a potential loss of customers or a decrease in loyalty. This is why it’s crucial to understand what your current customers want before starting a redesign. Additionally, if you don’t make the transition to the new design seamless, users may face issues navigating the site, and your online reputation may suffer.

Potential SEO Impact

Even if customers love your new site, a poorly executed site redesign may negatively impact your search engine rankings. Factors like changes in your website’s structure, URL changes, or a loss of quality content can lead to a lower SEO ranking. So using the best SEO tools that drive organic traffic during the redesign process is essential to minimize this type of negative effect.

Site Migration

If your company keeps up with its website semi-regularly, a full redesign might be overkill. You may only have a few issues you can’t work out, which a site migration will solve. A site migration is when you move your current website to a new hosting platform. During this process, you can change aspects of your site, but the primary focus is making your current one work on the new platform. Here are some pros and cons to be aware of.

Boost in Performance and User Experience

One of the foremost benefits of site migration is the potential improvement in website performance and user experience. A newer platform or an optimized website structure may load faster, run smoother, and offer enhanced features and functionality. This, in turn, can lead to improved user satisfaction, a lower bounce rate, and a higher conversion rate.

Potential for Improved SEO

A site migration may cause temporary fluctuations in search engine rankings. But if done correctly, a well-planned migration can lead to enhanced SEO in the long run. Changing URL structures, losing backlinks, and other modifications may negatively affect your search rankings. Fortunately, the benefits you’ll receive in return, such as faster page-loading speed, increased mobile friendliness, and better schema markup, will significantly improve your search engine visibility once the migration is complete.

Risk of Losing Valuable Content

If not handled carefully, site migration can lead to the unintentional loss of valuable content, such as blog posts, customer testimonials, and product info. Creating backups, double-checking redirects, and auditing the new site for missing or misplaced content is crucial because of this.

Not Always Possible

The most notable downside of a site migration is that it’s not always possible. Understandably, this process can take quite a bit of time. So if your site is too big, moving it might not be feasible. Even if your site isn’t too large, complexities with your current one could interfere with the new platform’s code.

Which To Choose?

Now that you better understand the differences between site redesigns and site migrations, it’s time to pick the one that’ll work for your company. Typically, larger changes require a full redesign, while smaller ones might just need a migration. Whichever you choose, though, we know that your new and improved site will be just what your business needs.