Most redesigns start with "let's make it look better." We start by finding out why it isn't working, then redesign around the answer, not a hunch.
Maybe you inherited this website and never chose the platform. Maybe the board's asking for a fresher-looking site while you're quietly worried it won't fix a thing. Either way, you need someone who checks before promising, and explains what they find in plain English.
We start with a proper diagnosis, not a moodboard: analytics, user behaviour, the actual points where people give up. Then we redesign around what we find, with you across every decision, never left refreshing your inbox wondering what's happening.
Our approach to successful projects
Before anyone opens a design tool, we gather what's really going on. That means pulling your analytics, watching session recordings, reading whatever support tickets or customer complaints already exist, and sitting down with the people who use the site daily, not just the people who commissioned it. If nobody in the business fully understands why the current site behaves the way it does, that's the first thing we fix. You'll often find the real issue was flagged months ago in a spreadsheet nobody read. We read it. This phase is deliberately unglamorous. No moodboards yet, no colour palettes. Just the evidence, gathered properly, so the redesign that follows is solving your actual problem rather than the one that's easiest to see. We pull this from Google Analytics 4 and heatmap review data, not just a quick skim, and keep analytics tracking honest so we're looking at real visitor behaviour rather than assuming it. Good user experience starts with this kind of evidence, not with a fresh coat of paint.
A site can look dated and still convert fine. It can look sharp and still be quietly leaking customers at step six of an eight-step checkout. We've seen both, and treating them the same way wastes your budget. In this phase we separate what's cosmetic from what's structural: is this a visual problem, a technical one, or a conversion-blocking process nobody's questioned in years? We've written publicly about the trap of "lipstick on the pig" redesigns, projects where the surface changes but nothing underneath does, and the numbers stay exactly where they were. Evaluation is how we avoid repeating that with your site. You get a clear, plain-English readout of what's actually wrong before we agree what to build. That's as true in web development as it is in visual design, a badly structured build can look fine and still fail your users. Part of this evaluation includes a proper content review too, checking whether what's on the page actually matches the search intent that brought someone there in the first place.
Only once we know what we're actually fixing do we start designing. Every screen we build traces back to something from the Gather and Evaluate phases: a drop-off point, a piece of user feedback, a business goal the old site couldn't support. You'll see work in progress throughout, not a single reveal at the end, and we'll tell you plainly if something isn't working rather than letting a bad idea run because it's easier than the conversation. Development happens in Umbraco, built cleanly rather than bolted together, so what we hand over is something your team can actually maintain. Nothing goes live because a deadline arrived. It goes live because the evidence says it'll do its job. That includes content restructuring where the current site architecture and navigation systems are working against people rather than for them. We rebuild the content hierarchy and website structure around how visitors actually move through the site, not around how the business happens to be organised internally.
A redesign that only you can operate isn't finished, it's just moved the risk somewhere else. Before launch, we make sure your team actually understands what's been built: how the CMS works, where the important settings live, how to make routine changes without needing us for every small edit. We document as we go rather than scrambling together a guide at the end, and we're happy to run a proper walkthrough with whoever'll be living in the site day to day. The goal is straightforward: if you left tomorrow, someone else in the business could still run this website without starting from zero. That covers the day-to-day basics of content management as well as the more particular parts of Umbraco as a content management system, so your team is comfortable running it long after we've stepped back.
Launch day isn't the finish line, it's when we find out if the diagnosis was right. We keep watching the numbers that mattered in the Evaluate phase, whether that's checkout completion, form submissions, or time on the pages that used to lose people, and we tell you honestly what's moved and what hasn't. If something still isn't working, that's a conversation, not something we quietly hope you don't notice. Ongoing support stays available long after launch, so the site keeps being looked after rather than left to slowly drift back into the state it was in before we started. That includes keeping an eye on website performance over time, not just on launch week, along with the regular security updates that keep things running properly behind the scenes.
Before any redesign work starts, we find out what's actually wrong with your current site. That means reviewing your analytics properly rather than skimming a dashboard, watching real session recordings to see where visitors hesitate or give up, and walking through your own key user journeys as a genuine customer would.
We're specifically looking for the difference between a site that looks tired and a site that's actively losing you business, because they're not the same problem and they don't have the same fix. You'll get a plain-English summary of what we found, with the technical, UX and conversion issues clearly separated from anything that's simply cosmetic, so any redesign decision that follows is based on evidence rather than opinion.
We're just as interested in mobile UX as desktop, since the two often behave completely differently, and we'll look specifically at how people interact with contact forms, since that's frequently where interest quietly drops away. All of this is grounded in your own Google Analytics data and whatever other analytics tools you're already using, rather than a generic checklist.
Once we know what needs fixing, we redesign the site to actually reflect your brand and support the goals your business has now, not the ones it had when the current site was built. That covers layout, typography, imagery and the overall feel of the site, always led by what your users actually respond to rather than personal taste or whatever's trending that month.
We'll design around the specific user behaviour uncovered in the diagnostic phase, so changes to navigation, calls to action or page structure are solving a problem we've already confirmed exists, not guessing at one. The result should feel unmistakably yours, sharper and more current, but never a surface-level facelift sitting on top of the same unsolved issues.
That's where your brand identity gets sharpened rather than reinvented from scratch, translating an agreed visual direction into a proper UX/UI redesign rather than a decorative refresh. We also build in the trust signals that reassure a new visitor they're in the right place, and design mobile-first, since most of your visitors will likely meet the new site on a phone before they meet it on a desktop.
Most redesigns we're brought in on involve rebuilding the site properly in Umbraco, whether you're migrating from another platform or moving off a version of Umbraco that's been patched together over the years. We build clean, well-structured content types and templates so your team can genuinely manage the site day to day, rather than needing a developer for routine updates.
This is also where a lot of hidden technical debt gets sorted, broken integrations, clunky content structures, pages that only make sense because of how the old site happened to grow. What you're left with is a platform that matches how your business actually works now, not a patchwork of decisions made for a business that's moved on. Part of this is proper content architecture, structuring content types so the CMS systems underneath actually make sense to the people using them day to day.
Where a site needs e-commerce capabilities, we build those into the same platform rather than bolting on a separate e-commerce platform that never quite talks to the rest of the site properly, and where it's useful, we'll connect everything to the marketing tools you're already using rather than asking your team to change how they work.
If your diagnostic turns up a specific process losing you customers, a checkout, an enquiry form, a booking flow, we treat fixing it as part of the redesign, not a separate project to circle back to later. We map every step a visitor has to take, look for friction, unnecessary fields, confusing error states or points where people simply give up, and redesign that flow around what actually gets people through it. This is often where the real return on a redesign sits.
A site can look considerably better and convert exactly the same if the process underneath it hasn't changed, so we treat this work with the same weight as anything visual, sometimes more. We map the conversion pathways end to end, not just the page a journey happens to start on, since a checkout, an enquiry form or booking systems can all quietly lose people at different points along the way, and even a single high-traffic landing page underperforming can matter more than the rest of the site combined.
Where lead generation matters more than direct sales, a small change here often has more impact on conversion rate, and conversion lift, than anything else on the site.
A redesign is also the right moment to sort the technical issues that have been quietly costing you, page speed, broken links, accessibility gaps, or a site that behaves differently across devices. We test properly across real browsers and screen sizes rather than assuming a design that works on one laptop works everywhere, and we build with performance in mind from the start rather than trying to optimise a finished site afterwards.
None of this is invisible to your visitors even when it's invisible to you: slow pages and clunky mobile experiences push people away long before they've formed an opinion about your new visual design. That includes checking against Core Web Vitals specifically, alongside page load times more broadly, using tools like PageSpeed Insights to see exactly where things are slowing down.
We test properly for mobile responsiveness, building responsive layouts and responsive designs that hold up on the devices people are actually using rather than assuming desktop first. Performance optimisation and speed optimisation are treated as part of the build from the start, not an afterthought once something's gone live, and we run accessibility checks against semantic HTML as standard throughout. Afterwards, we watch mobile engagement to see whether any of it actually moved the numbers.
Redesigns can quietly tank the search rankings a site's built up over years if the migration isn't handled with care, and we've seen that happen with sites we didn't build. We map your existing content and URLs before launch, plan redirects properly so nothing valuable gets lost or orphaned, and make sure metadata, structured data and technical SEO fundamentals carry across rather than resetting to zero.
Where content itself needs a rewrite, we do that with the same voice and evidence-led approach as the rest of the redesign. The goal is a new site that performs better than the old one from day one, not one that has to slowly earn back ground it never needed to lose. Done badly, an SEO migration can undo years of work in a single afternoon, so we treat 301 redirect mapping as a serious part of the project, not a box to tick at the end.
That means proper 301 redirects for every page, image and digital asset that's moving or disappearing, a sitemap redesign that reflects the new structure honestly, and schema markup carried across so search engines understand the new site as quickly as possible. We check everything against Google Search Console before and after launch, and where the keyword research supports it, we'll use the migration as a chance to tidy up pages that were never quite pulling their weight for search engine optimisation in the first place.
Before any redesign work starts, we find out what's actually wrong with your current site. That means reviewing your analytics properly rather than skimming a dashboard, watching real session recordings to see where visitors hesitate or give up, and walking through your own key user journeys as a genuine customer would.
We're specifically looking for the difference between a site that looks tired and a site that's actively losing you business, because they're not the same problem and they don't have the same fix. You'll get a plain-English summary of what we found, with the technical, UX and conversion issues clearly separated from anything that's simply cosmetic, so any redesign decision that follows is based on evidence rather than opinion.
We're just as interested in mobile UX as desktop, since the two often behave completely differently, and we'll look specifically at how people interact with contact forms, since that's frequently where interest quietly drops away. All of this is grounded in your own Google Analytics data and whatever other analytics tools you're already using, rather than a generic checklist.
Once we know what needs fixing, we redesign the site to actually reflect your brand and support the goals your business has now, not the ones it had when the current site was built. That covers layout, typography, imagery and the overall feel of the site, always led by what your users actually respond to rather than personal taste or whatever's trending that month.
We'll design around the specific user behaviour uncovered in the diagnostic phase, so changes to navigation, calls to action or page structure are solving a problem we've already confirmed exists, not guessing at one. The result should feel unmistakably yours, sharper and more current, but never a surface-level facelift sitting on top of the same unsolved issues.
That's where your brand identity gets sharpened rather than reinvented from scratch, translating an agreed visual direction into a proper UX/UI redesign rather than a decorative refresh. We also build in the trust signals that reassure a new visitor they're in the right place, and design mobile-first, since most of your visitors will likely meet the new site on a phone before they meet it on a desktop.
Most redesigns we're brought in on involve rebuilding the site properly in Umbraco, whether you're migrating from another platform or moving off a version of Umbraco that's been patched together over the years. We build clean, well-structured content types and templates so your team can genuinely manage the site day to day, rather than needing a developer for routine updates.
This is also where a lot of hidden technical debt gets sorted, broken integrations, clunky content structures, pages that only make sense because of how the old site happened to grow. What you're left with is a platform that matches how your business actually works now, not a patchwork of decisions made for a business that's moved on. Part of this is proper content architecture, structuring content types so the CMS systems underneath actually make sense to the people using them day to day.
Where a site needs e-commerce capabilities, we build those into the same platform rather than bolting on a separate e-commerce platform that never quite talks to the rest of the site properly, and where it's useful, we'll connect everything to the marketing tools you're already using rather than asking your team to change how they work.
If your diagnostic turns up a specific process losing you customers, a checkout, an enquiry form, a booking flow, we treat fixing it as part of the redesign, not a separate project to circle back to later. We map every step a visitor has to take, look for friction, unnecessary fields, confusing error states or points where people simply give up, and redesign that flow around what actually gets people through it. This is often where the real return on a redesign sits.
A site can look considerably better and convert exactly the same if the process underneath it hasn't changed, so we treat this work with the same weight as anything visual, sometimes more. We map the conversion pathways end to end, not just the page a journey happens to start on, since a checkout, an enquiry form or booking systems can all quietly lose people at different points along the way, and even a single high-traffic landing page underperforming can matter more than the rest of the site combined.
Where lead generation matters more than direct sales, a small change here often has more impact on conversion rate, and conversion lift, than anything else on the site.
A redesign is also the right moment to sort the technical issues that have been quietly costing you, page speed, broken links, accessibility gaps, or a site that behaves differently across devices. We test properly across real browsers and screen sizes rather than assuming a design that works on one laptop works everywhere, and we build with performance in mind from the start rather than trying to optimise a finished site afterwards.
None of this is invisible to your visitors even when it's invisible to you: slow pages and clunky mobile experiences push people away long before they've formed an opinion about your new visual design. That includes checking against Core Web Vitals specifically, alongside page load times more broadly, using tools like PageSpeed Insights to see exactly where things are slowing down.
We test properly for mobile responsiveness, building responsive layouts and responsive designs that hold up on the devices people are actually using rather than assuming desktop first. Performance optimisation and speed optimisation are treated as part of the build from the start, not an afterthought once something's gone live, and we run accessibility checks against semantic HTML as standard throughout. Afterwards, we watch mobile engagement to see whether any of it actually moved the numbers.
Redesigns can quietly tank the search rankings a site's built up over years if the migration isn't handled with care, and we've seen that happen with sites we didn't build. We map your existing content and URLs before launch, plan redirects properly so nothing valuable gets lost or orphaned, and make sure metadata, structured data and technical SEO fundamentals carry across rather than resetting to zero.
Where content itself needs a rewrite, we do that with the same voice and evidence-led approach as the rest of the redesign. The goal is a new site that performs better than the old one from day one, not one that has to slowly earn back ground it never needed to lose. Done badly, an SEO migration can undo years of work in a single afternoon, so we treat 301 redirect mapping as a serious part of the project, not a box to tick at the end.
That means proper 301 redirects for every page, image and digital asset that's moving or disappearing, a sitemap redesign that reflects the new structure honestly, and schema markup carried across so search engines understand the new site as quickly as possible. We check everything against Google Search Console before and after launch, and where the keyword research supports it, we'll use the migration as a chance to tidy up pages that were never quite pulling their weight for search engine optimisation in the first place.
Mark Whitworth, UX Designer at Gecko
A national charity came to us with an inaccessible, uneditable site that didn’t reflect their impact. Within 10 weeks, we delivered a new Umbraco build, simplified their user journey, and integrated their donation system. The bounce rate dropped by 42% in month one – and the team finally felt in control.
That's exactly what the diagnostic stage is for. Plenty of sites we look at don't need a full redesign at all, they need a specific process fixed, like a checkout or an enquiry form, or a handful of pages rebuilt. We'll tell you honestly if a smaller fix will do the job. If a full redesign genuinely is the right call, you'll know it's based on evidence rather than a hunch that the site "looks old."
It can, if it's handled carelessly, which is one of the more common ways redesign projects go wrong. We map your existing URLs and content before launch, plan redirects properly, and carry over the technical SEO fundamentals so you're not starting from zero. Done properly, a redesign should improve your search performance over time, not set it back. If your Google rankings dip briefly during the migration itself, that's not unusual and usually recovers within a few weeks once search engines have fully recrawled the new site.
Every project starts with a proper diagnostic, checking your analytics, user behaviour and any known technical issues, before any design work begins. From there it covers visual and brand redesign, an Umbraco rebuild where needed, fixes to any conversion-blocking processes we've identified, performance and accessibility work, and careful content migration so nothing valuable gets lost. It's a full service, not just a new coat of paint.
Yes, and that's specifically what the Knowledge phase of our process is for. We build in Umbraco with your team's day-to-day reality in mind, document how everything works as we go, and run a proper walkthrough before launch. The aim is that routine updates don't need to come back to us, even if the bigger technical work does.
It depends on the scope, and specifically on what the diagnostic uncovers. A redesign that's mostly visual with a straightforward CMS rebuild moves faster than one where we've also found a conversion process that needs redesigning from the ground up. We'll give you a realistic timeline once we understand what we're actually dealing with, not a generic estimate before we've looked.
Usually, a redesign that doesn't move the numbers has fixed how the site looks without touching why people were leaving in the first place. We won't start with visuals. We start by finding the actual drop-off points, whether that's a clunky checkout, a confusing form, or a technical issue nobody flagged, and design around fixing that specifically. If your last redesign was lipstick on a deeper problem, this is the stage that catches it.
No. We regularly redesign and rebuild sites that are migrating from other platforms onto Umbraco, as well as sites already on Umbraco that have grown messily over time. Whatever you're moving from, the diagnostic and planning work happens before we touch the build, so the migration itself is deliberate rather than a straight lift-and-shift of old problems onto new software.
As involved as you want to be, but you won't be left guessing either way. You'll see work in progress throughout rather than a single reveal at the end, and we'll flag anything that isn't working as we go. Clients with less time to spare still get full visibility, just with fewer meetings, we adapt to how your team actually operates.
The first step is a conversation, not a commitment. Tell us what's not working, or what you suspect isn't, and we'll talk through whether a full redesign is actually the right call before anything's scoped or costed. You can book a slot directly, or send us a rough brief and we'll come back with questions rather than a generic quote.
CMS integration specifically means connecting your content management system to other tools, whereas API integration is the broader technical method used to make that connection happen. In practice, most of our website integration services involve both: the API is how the connection works, and the CMS is one of the systems being connected.
