A new website, or a redesign of the one you have?

Most people who call us are not asking for a new website. They are asking for the one they already have to start doing what it does not do: open properly on a phone, show up on Google, bring in enquiries. Sometimes that is a repair. Sometimes starting over is cheaper. The difference does not show in the design, it shows in what is standing underneath it.

When a redesign is worth it

A redesign means the skeleton stays and what you see on top of it changes. It is the right choice when everything below the surface is in order and the site simply looks like it is from 2016.

• The structure is logical. Pages sit where a person expects to find them and each one has a clear purpose.
• The content is usable. The copy describes what you actually do, the photographs are your own and of decent quality.
• The technology is current. The system is still maintained, the plugins still get updates, nothing is frozen on a version from six years ago.
• Something already ranks. If you show up for part of the search terms, there is something to build on.
• You change the content yourself. If that works today without a developer, it will work tomorrow.

When that is the case, a new look, faster loading and properly organised pages per service are enough. There is no reason to knock down something that is standing.

When a new site is cheaper than a repair

The opposite case is easy to recognise: every small edit becomes a negotiation. You ask for one price to be changed and the answer is that it will take three days. That is not the contractor being lazy, that is a site resisting.

• The system is no longer maintained. An old version with no security patches is an open door, and the upgrade breaks half the site.
• The plugins are dead. A key plugin has had no new version in years, and without it even the parts that do work stop working.
• Mobile was an afterthought. If the site slides sideways on a phone or the text has to be zoomed in to read, that is not a CSS matter, it is the foundation.
• Nothing can be changed without code. Prices, dates and copy are set in concrete inside the files.
• Speed is a lost battle. A theme that loads a megabyte and a half before anything appears does not become fast through touch-ups.

A five minute test, without a single quote

You can run this yourself, before you ask anybody for a price. Five checks, every one of them free.

• Speed on mobile. Put your address into PageSpeed Insights and look only at the mobile score. Below 50 is a sign the problem is not cosmetic.
• Open it on a phone while you are out. Not on the wi-fi at home but outside, on a weaker signal, the way a customer opens it.
• Type site:yourdomain.hr into Google. The number of results shows how many of your pages Google is holding in its index at all.
• Try changing a single word. If you do not know where that is done, or you need somebody else for it, that is your answer.
• Look at when something was last published. If the most recent news item is three years old, the content has already slipped.

If the first two pass and the last three fail, what you probably need is a redesign and new content, not a new site. If the first two fail, the foundation is worn out. More on visibility itself in why your site is not showing up on Google.

What you keep in both cases

The most common fear is that a new site means starting from zero and losing everything you have built up. It does not. This travels with you whichever way you decide.

• The domain. It stays the same, and so does everything tied to it.
• The content. Copy and photographs are carried over, and cleaned along the way of whatever no longer holds.
• Google rankings. With the addresses moved across correctly, what was ranking carries on ranking.
• Links from other sites. Links collected over years stay in force as long as the old addresses lead to the new ones.
• Email. It has nothing to do with the website and does not get touched.

The most expensive mistake is losing the old addresses

This is where most badly executed moves fall apart, and it rarely gets a mention in the quote. When a site changes, the addresses often change with it. The old /services.php?id=4 becomes /services/something. If nobody connects the old one to the new one, every link that led to that page for years suddenly leads nowhere, and Google spends months not knowing where you went.

The solution is called a redirect and it is done before launch, not after. Every old address is listed and assigned a new one. For Zov Divljine that came to 133 redirects, one by one, because the old shop had years of accumulated addresses that could not be allowed to disappear.

The question to put to any contractor before you sign is this: how will you carry the old addresses over. If the answer is vague, ask for the list.

What it looks like when it goes well

A move done the way it should be does not feel like an interruption. For Gospoja Mendula the new shop brought 10% higher sales, not because it is prettier but because shipping finally calculated by weight and the stock levels were accurate.

Speed is the other half of the story. The page you are reading paints its main content on a phone in about a second. That is not a trick, it is the consequence of carrying no code it does not need. Check it yourself before you believe it.

What this means for price and timeline

A redesign is as a rule the smaller job, because what works is left alone. A new site is the bigger job, but with a genuinely old site it often works out cheaper, since you are not paying to work around problems that keep coming back anyway.

What pushes the scope up is the same in both cases: how many pages there are, whether booking or selling is needed, how much of the content is ready and how many old addresses have to be carried over. A fuller breakdown in how much a website costs, and for shops in how much a web shop costs.