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July 15, 2025

You don’t need a redesign. You need a rethink.

When a website starts to feel clunky or outdated, it’s easy to assume it needs a full redesign. But the problems most teams face aren’t about visuals. They’re about structure, process, and ownership.

You don’t need a redesign. You need a rethink.

Before you pour time and budget into new templates, take a moment to rethink how your site actually works.

Rethinking

Redesigns often fail because they fix the surface, not the system. A fresh homepage doesn’t solve confusing navigation or scattered content. And if your publishing process is already strained, a new interface won’t make it easier to manage (in fact, it might make it worse).

If your site feels off, it’s worth asking whether the issue lies in the design, or in the way the site is planned and maintained.

Including the team

Your Editors know where the friction is.

They deal with bottlenecks, broken workflows, and buried content every day. If they’re not part of the conversation early on, you’re likely to miss what really needs fixing.

We’ve written about this before in “Why confident Editors are your CMS’s best UX test” and “Content strategy works better when Editors are in the room”. Their insight is your shortcut to better decisions.

Doing

The best improvements rarely start with wireframes. They start with listening.

Fixing the way content moves through your system, streamlining ownership, making search more useful, or even just archiving what no one can maintain - these are the things that make your site feel better to use and easier to manage. They might not be visible in a screenshot, but they’re the changes that stick.

Most sites don’t need a full redesign. They need attention, intention, and room to improve.

What to ask before you redesign

If you’re thinking about a redesign, ask yourself:

  • Do we know what’s actually not working?
  • Have we involved the people who manage the site?
  • Are we solving structural problems or just changing the visuals?
  • Could we get further by fixing the way we work?

If you answered yes to any of those, it’s time to pause the design sprint and start rethinking the foundation.

If you feel like you'd like to start having this conversation, and need some help asking or answering the hard questions, give us a shout. We're here to help.