How do I know if my current website needs a redesign?

Founders ask me this when they already know the answer and want permission.

Not every tired-looking website needs a rebuild. Some need a tune-up, a performance pass, a content refresh. A full redesign is expensive, takes weeks, and if the real problem is a slow CMS or broken redirects, a new coat of paint doesn’t fix it.

Here are the seven signals that mean you actually need a redesign. Not just a facelift.

1. Your conversion rate has dropped and you can’t explain why

A good marketing site converts 2-5% of visitors to leads. If you were doing that six months ago and you’re at 0.8% now, something structural has changed.

Usually it’s one of three things. Your messaging stopped matching what people are searching for. Your competitors raised the bar on design and your site now looks dated by comparison. Or your mobile experience quietly broke after a plugin update you didn’t notice.

A redesign fixes all three at once. Patching individually usually doesn’t.

2. You’re embarrassed to send the link

If a potential customer asks for your website and you hesitate before sending it, that’s the signal. You already know.

I’ve had three clients this year who told me they stopped including their website URL in email signatures because they didn’t want people to click it. One of them was running a €2m/year SaaS. The site was from 2019.

Redesign.

3. The CMS is slowing your team down

Marketing wants to publish a blog post. It takes two hours because the WordPress editor is broken, the Elementor templates don’t work on mobile, and nobody remembers who has admin access.

This isn’t a design problem. It’s a platform problem. And the fix is usually a migration more than a redesign.

I just finished a WordPress-to-Framer migration for Camp Network precisely because of this. Their old setup required a developer for every page update. Their new one, the marketing team ships changes themselves.

4. Your Lighthouse score is below 70 on mobile

Open your site in Chrome DevTools. Run Lighthouse. If mobile performance scores below 70, you’re bleeding traffic.

Google uses mobile Core Web Vitals as a ranking factor. Users bounce from sites that take longer than 3 seconds to load on mobile. Both of those compound.

Sometimes performance is fixable without a redesign. Compress images, lazy-load videos, strip third-party scripts. Sometimes the whole architecture is the problem and no amount of optimization will save it. A rebuild in Framer, Webflow, or custom Next.js usually comes in at 90+ on Lighthouse by default.

5. You’ve outgrown the template you launched with

Most founders launch on a template. A $49 Webflow template, a free WordPress theme, a Framer Marketplace starter. That’s fine for 0-to-1.

But templates have ceilings. The pricing section was built for 3 tiers and you now have 5. The blog layout was built for lifestyle photography and you post technical articles. The hero was built for a mobile app and you sell enterprise SaaS.

If you’re constantly fighting the template, the template is costing you more than a custom site would.

6. Your site doesn’t match the quality of your product

Peec.ai had this problem when they first contacted me. Their product was polished, modern, used by serious teams. Their website was a basic marketing shell that looked like it was built in a weekend.

Buyers don’t buy products that look better than their website. They assume the website is what you actually prioritize. If your SaaS costs €500/month and your site looks like a $19 template, you’ve already lost half the sale before anyone reads the copy.

Fixed that for them. Then stayed on retainer for ongoing work.

7. You can’t add what you need without breaking something

New feature announcement. New integration page. New case study. New pricing tier.

If every addition to the site requires calling a developer, breaks the existing layout, or takes two weeks to ship, your site has aged into a liability. A well-structured modern site should let your marketing team add pages without rebuilding components.

This is the signal I see most in my retainer work. Not that the site is broken. That the site is too fragile to change.

When you don’t need a redesign

You just launched 12 months ago. Nothing structural has changed. Your conversion is steady. Mobile scores above 80. Marketing can publish independently.

Your site is fine. Spend the money on paid acquisition or product instead.

The three ways I work with founders on redesigns

Full redesign — strategy, structure, design, build. 4-6 weeks. Starting around €8,000. For founders who need the whole site rethought.

Platform migration — moving from WordPress, Webflow, Wix, or Squarespace to Framer, preserving SEO and content. 3-5 weeks depending on scope. This is most of my work right now.

Retainer — ongoing design and development support for teams that ship regularly. Monthly engagement. For teams like Peec.ai, Lux Studio, and others I work with month-to-month.

Not sure which one you need? That’s what the discovery call is for.

hello@framer-expert.com

New to Framer? 3 months free on the Pro plan with my referral: framer.link/framerexpert