The rebuild: doing it better, without breaking it
A website ages fast. Dated design, slow pages, shaky mobile: after a few years it works against you. But a botched rebuild is worse than the old site. The real challenge: modernise without breaking what already worked.
Rebuilding a site is not throwing everything away. It is keeping what converts and what ranks, and fixing the rest. The most common trap: starting from a blank page and losing your search ranking, your well-placed pages and your regulars on the way.
What a rebuild covers
Something new, while keeping what you have earned:
- An inventory of the existing site: what works, what ranks, what holds it back.
- Search ranking preserved: old addresses redirected, structure kept.
- A new design and structure, built for today and for mobile.
- Your content carried over, sorted and put back to work.
- Going live without downtime, or loss of traffic.
Where a rebuild stops
So every need gets the right answer:
- Starting from nothing, with no existing sitethat is a showcase site or an online shop.
- Refreshing only the logo and visual worldthat is branding.
- Adding a real feature (account, booking)that is bespoke development.
- Rewriting the textthat is copywriting, which we build into the project.
A good rebuild is invisible to Google and obvious to your visitors: they find everything again, better.
The rebuild that cost 8% of sales
Cluttered, dated, unreadable.
Clear, fast, up to date.
Rebuild, yes. But what stays counts as much as what changes.
In 2014, Marks & Spencer launched a new site costing 150 million pounds. The catch: every customer had to recreate their account. Half of the six million registered users never came back, many found the site "complicated". The result: −8.1% in online sales the following quarter.
The design was more modern, though. But habits had been broken and redirects neglected. A rebuild is judged on what it preserves as much as on what it renews.
What we believe
A successful rebuild starts with an inventory: what works, what ranks, what converts. At Iggy, we redirect every old address to the new one, we protect your search equity, and we only change what has to change. Something new, without the breakage.
Rebuild better, without starting from scratch.Build my rebuild
Source: the Marks & Spencer site relaunch (February 2014), an 8.1% drop in online sales the following quarter, widely documented in the press.