Website redesign and email migration

If your website is slow, awkward on a phone or out of date, people leave and pick someone else. A good redesign fixes the things that cost you work, not just the colours.

These are the usual signs it’s time:

• The site is slow, especially on phones
• You have to ask a developer for every small change
• It no longer looks like your business does today
• People visit but don’t call, email or buy
• It runs on an old theme or page builder that is hard to update

We don’t just redesign to a brief. We build for Google too: fast pages, clear structure, mobile-friendly layouts and content that answers the questions your customers actually ask. That is what helps people find you.

The risk with any redesign is losing the search traffic you already have. Google’s own guidance on moving a site with URL changes explains why redirects and careful planning matter. We follow it on every project.

A few of the websites we’ve designed and built for clients in South Africa and abroad.

• A new design: built on WordPress with a custom theme or a page builder, whichever suits your site and your team
• Your content, moved and tidied: existing pages carried across, cleaned up and restructured where it helps
• Redirects for every old address: so visitors and Google land on the right new page and you keep your rankings
• Faster hosting: a move to managed hosting if you need it, plus a site speed check before and after launch
• SEO set up: page titles, descriptions, headings and image alt text done properly
• Google Analytics and Search Console: connected, so you can see who visits and how Google sees your site
• POPIA-ready basics: a cookie banner, privacy policy and consent on your forms
• Easy editing: built so you can change text, images and pages yourself

1. Review. We look at your current site, your goals and your Google data.
2. Fixed quote. You get a clear, fixed price before any work starts, based on the size of the site and what it needs to do.
3. Design and build. We design and build the new site on a private staging copy, so your live site keeps working while we work.
4. Content and redirects. We move your content across, map every old address to its new page and set up SEO and tracking.
5. Launch. We test forms, speed and mobile layouts, then switch over at a quiet time.
6. Check and hand over. We watch Search Console after launch, fix anything that comes up and show you how to run the site.

Get a redesign quote

Most ranking drops after a redesign come from the same few mistakes: pages that disappear, addresses that change without a redirect, and titles that get lost in the move. This is how we avoid them.

• Keep URLs where possible: if a page address works, we keep it. Fewer changes means less for Google to relearn.
• Redirect mapping: before launch we list every old address and match it to the most relevant new page with a permanent (301) redirect.
• Titles and descriptions carried over: your SEO titles, meta descriptions and headings come across, and we improve the weak ones rather than starting from nothing.
• Content that ranks stays: pages that bring in traffic are kept, not trimmed for the sake of design.
• Search Console after launch: we submit the new sitemap, check for crawl errors and broken links, and fix them quickly.

Some movement in the first few weeks is normal while Google recrawls the site. Done this way, a redesign usually ends up helping your rankings, because the new site is faster and easier for Google to read.

Changing hosting or email provider? We move your mailboxes, folders, contacts and calendars to your new provider, and update the DNS so mail keeps arriving and nothing goes missing.

We plan the switch for a quiet time, copy everything across first and only change where mail is delivered once the new mailboxes are ready. Your team keeps working. Email migration is quoted per mailbox, and we can usually include it in the same project as your redesign.

We’re happy to look after your new site for you, with updates, support and changes whenever you need them. What makes us different is that we also train every client to run their own website with confidence.

Our Manage Your Own Site course is a hands-on session on your own new website, so you are confident from day one. Training is one-on-one or for your team, in person or online, and we stay available to help afterwards. See our WordPress courses.

Starting from scratch rather than redesigning? See website development and web design. To keep your new site fast and safe after launch, look at our managed website hosting and website maintenance plans. If you collect personal information through your forms, our POPIA compliance service covers the rest.

• Website Redesign: What to Consider Before You Start: Before a website redesign, get clear on your goals, decide what to keep and plan how to protect your Google rankings
• Website Launch Checklist: Final Checks Before You Go Live: Our full website launch checklist, updated for 2026: content, SEO, speed, security and legal, forms and email, analytics, and what to check after you go live