The case against the redesign cycle

Somewhere in your company's future there's a meeting where someone says the website feels dated, and a six-figure redesign is born. Eighteen months after it launches, the cycle begins again. This is the standard rhythm of corporate web design, and it's a bonfire with a project plan.

Why redesigns keep failing

The big-bang redesign resets everything at once: information architecture, URLs, content, analytics baselines and all the small hard-won fixes nobody documented. Rankings dip. Muscle memory breaks. And because the whole budget went to launch day, there's nothing left for the year of small corrections every launch needs.

Worst of all, redesigns optimise for the internal audience — the board sees a shiny new thing — while customers, who were mid-relationship with the old site, get their furniture rearranged overnight.

What compounding looks like

The alternative isn't neglect. It's tending: a continuous cadence of measurement, experiment and refinement on a foundation built to evolve. Change the hero, watch the numbers, keep what works. Fix the checkout step where 30% quietly leave. Add the page that answers the question sales hears every week.

• Month-over-month improvements survive; big bangs reset.
• Experiments teach you about your customers; redesigns teach you about your agency.
• A tended site never 'feels dated' — because it never stops absorbing the present.

Websites are gardens, not statues.

When a rebuild is honest

Sometimes the foundation really is the problem — a platform that fights every change, a brand that pivoted, debt that costs more to carry than to clear. Then rebuild, once, properly: on foundations designed for the next decade of small changes, with a care plan budgeted from day one.

The goal isn't to never redesign. It's to make this redesign your last one — and everything after it, gardening.